The ADO.NET Providers for Google and SharePoint make it easy to retrieve and update data in both Google's web services and SharePoint. This article shows how the SQL interface to data makes it easy to build applications that need to move data from one source to another.
The application described here is a demo Windows application that synchronizes calendar events between Google and SharePoint, but the RSSBus Providers can be used to achieve integrations on both the .NET and the Java platforms, including more sophisticated features like full automation.
Getting the Events
Step 1: Google accounts can have several calendars. Obtain a list of a user's Google Calendars by issuing a query to the Calendars table. For example: SELECT * FROM Calendars.
Step 2: In order to get a list of the events from a given Google Calendar, issue a query to the CalendarEvents table while specifying the CalendarId from the Calendars table. The resulting events can be further filtered by using the StartDateTime or EndDateTime columns. For example:
SELECT * FROM CalendarEvents
WHERE (CalendarId = '
[email protected]')
AND (StartDateTime >= '1/1/2012')
AND (StartDateTime <= '2/1/2012')
Step 3: SharePoint stores data in Lists. There are various types of lists, e.g., document lists and calendar lists. A SharePoint account can have several lists of the same type. To find all the calendar lists in SharePoint, use the ListLists stored procedure and inspect the BaseTemplate column.
Step 4: The SharePoint data provider models each SharPoint list as a table. Get the events in a particular calendar by querying the table with the same name as the list. The events may be filtered further by specifying the EventDate or EndDate columns. For example:
SELECT * FROM Calendar
WHERE (EventDate >= '1/1/2012')
AND (EventDate <= '2/1/2012')
Synchronizing the Events
Synchronizing the events is a simple process. Once the events from Google and SharePoint are available they can be compared and synchronized based on user preference. The sample application does this based on user input, but it is easy to create one that does the synchronization automatically. The INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements available in both data providers makes it easy to create, update, or delete events as needed.
Pre-Built Demo Application
The executable for the demo application can be downloaded here. Note that this demo is built using BETA builds of the ADO.NET Provider for Google
V2 and ADO.NET Provider for SharePoint
V2, and will expire in 2013.
Source Code
You can download the full source of the demo application here. You will need the Google ADO.NET Data Provider
V2 and the SharePoint ADO.NET Data Provider
V2, which can be obtained here.
