Does sharepoint online support external Data sources

Question

We are looking to migrate to sharepoint online from our current on premise installation and currently have one question that is still unanswered.

We use custom WebParts (which we will need if we migrate) with a custom dll that accesses an on premise oracle database.

Will sharepoint online be able to access this database over vpn an equivalent technology or is it not capable of accessing data outside itself?

Answer 1

It depend what type of plan you have, if you have E3 or E4 then you can access the external data source.

here is the great office article which explain what you can do it with external data source. Oracle is one of the supported database listed.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/introduction-to-external-data-HA102891586.aspx

other option is

"is display data from external sources as a data view web part in SharePoint online. You'd need to write a web service to access that data, then go to "Data sources" in sharepoint designer and create that web service data source. Then, create a data view web part to display that data. Here are my data view web part screencasts: "

Source: http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/154/t/1299.aspx