Professional Microsoft® SharePoint® Designer 2007

10.4. Making Connections

One of the most powerful capabilities of SharePoint is Web Part connections, which enable you to configure one Web Part to influence the happenings in others. List views, Data Views, and many other Web Parts support the Web Part connection interface.

10.4.1. What Is a Web Part Connection?

With Web Part connections, you go beyond displaying information from multiple sources to creating composite applications drawing from (and potentially updating) information from all over your organization, and beyond. Web Part connections can be created both from the web interface and from within SharePoint Designer.

Some Web Parts, such as MOSS filter parts, only implement the provider interface, meaning they can only send information to other parts. Some parts, like the Image Web Part, only implement the receiver function. Others, such as most list and Data Views, provide both.

Connections can be made between any two Web Parts that support the provider and receiver interfaces. You can, for instance, create a master/detail display, a form to provide query parameters to a report, or almost any other type of (potentially heterogeneous) web display.

Be careful, however, that you draw from the provider the type of information the receiver expects. Otherwise, the results can be unexpected (the GIGO — Garbage In, Garbage Out — principle). For example, the Image Web Part expects a connection to contain the URL of the image it is to display. If you map it to a plaintext field, ...