As I previously stated, I am still learning about some of these SharePoint add-ons, and might make some erroneous statements as I discuss these offerings. I also offered to correct any misinformation that I provide. To that point, following my last post, I was contacted by KnowledgeLake to inform me of a couple of incorrect assumptions I arrived at following my initial look at their solution.

Chris Caplinger, CTO at KnowledgeLake, related to me that I was incorrect in my assumption that the KnowledgeLake solution requires the use of the KnowledgeLake interface as opposed to the SharePoint native interfaces. Chris said specifically that "using the KnowledgeLake software you still use the SharePoint interfaces to manage your configuration, taxonomies and such. We simply enhance the experience. For example viewing TIFFs and PDFs. We simply provide a viewer that opens them (for viewing) in the browser. You even add the functionality by simply turning on a Site Collection Feature. Nothing special to do, it just works. As for connecting to external sources, we allow you (inside the SharePoint interface) to connect your SharePoint columns to ODBC sources"

On the topic of connecting to external data sources, I'd be interested in learning more about solutions that have added this capability to SharePoint, namely to include data sources that are not currently available to SharePoint. Many solutions use fairly broad language to describe this feature if they offer it, so I am trying to pinpoint specific types of external data sources.

For the SharePoint architects and gurus out there, what add-on solutions are you fond of and why? Which ones provide the best support for external data sources?

Cheers,
Lawrence