Connecting to a shared drive on network with SharePoint 2007

Question

I need to use a shared drive with SharePoint 2007 instead of document library/list, mainly due to space limitations.

My organization uses MOSS 2007. The Business Data Catalog can use a database or a web service as data source. So it appears I may not be able to use this feature to connect to the shared drive. Can I develop custom code in .NET and use it to integrate the shared drive with SharePoint site? If so, can you guide me to a relevant resource that can help me develop such functionality?

The functionalities I require are :

1. ability to upload/download files from the shared drive from the SharePoint site.
2. ability to detect when new files are created on the drive, or when existing ones are modified, and send relevant alerts.
3. workflows that can interact with the shared drive, just like they interact with a SharePoint list

Answer 1

I'm not exactly sure why you are using SharePoint for this because from my understanding you can simple create a web or windows application and link it to your shared drive. IF you still want to use SharePoint please see below.

from the top of my head this is the following approach than I can suggest for your requirements:

1. Create A Published folder and inside that create an unpublished folder.
2. Create a scheduled task calling a FileWatcher application which monitors the unpublished folder.
3. The FileWatcher application will move the files inside the unpublished folder to the published folder and use the SharePoint web services particularly the List service to update a specific list in the SharePoint and point it to the path from the Shared Drive.
4. You can use SharePoint workflows to check whether an item was modified to send proper notifications. This can be done via SharePoint designer and do not consume much space. This is more advisable instead of creating your own notification application.