Is it possible to display and search data using orchard cms from an external datasource?

Question

I'm just starting to play around with Orchard CMS. I like what I see so far, but I need to be able to create pages that display record details for data stored in another system. Does any one know if that is possible?

I have a SQL Server database that hold real estate property record information. This information gets displayed on the web. On that same website are informational content pages (FAQs, Contact Us, Home, etc...) What I would like to to is leverage the CMS portion of Orchard for the content pages. Then I would like to write a module using the Orchard that would get the real estate info, allow users to search parcels, and display detail pages for each parcel.

If you view the site http://www.sc-pa.com/search you can search by last name "smith" and select one record. That may help illustrate what I need Orchard to do.

Answer 1

Yes, that is possible, but your scenario is way too vague to get into any specifics. Can you elaborate on exactly what you are trying to do: what does the external data look like, where is it stored, how do you want to integrate it into Orchard, do you need any integration with content types and parts, or with search, etc.

Answer 2

One alternative is to expose ur data as web service or odata endpoint and then use jquery to do asynch call to get json data. Then ur home free.

Create a page and put the javascript in that or include a ref to js file.