Four Integration Methods

Developers can take one of four basic approaches when creating a SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003 Web Part to access corporate applications:

Web clipping. If the corporate application or a middleware application already supplies a Web interface suitable for portal users, a general-purpose SPS 2003 Web Part can wrap an external Web page, an XML file, or a Web Services Remote Portlet-compliant portal with a Web Part frame.

Point to point. Web Parts can use Web services, ADO.NET, or the back-end application’s native API to directly access its functions in a point-to-point fashion.

Data cache. If the portal needs read-only access only to the application’s data and does not need live or up-to-the-minute data, Web Parts can make ADO.NET database queries to a database replicated or extracted from the production data.

Integration server. For more complex scenarios, such as when it is more efficient to separate the portal’s presentation logic from the business or data translation logic, one or more middle-tier servers can be used between the portal and the back-end applications.