user profile synch or custom profile provider in MOSS 2007

[Antonio]

Hi all,

I'm trying to import user profiles data from a db to a Form Based
Authentication MOSS 2007 site.

I've already successfully realized a custom Membership provider and a
Role provider for the site and now the customer is asking to see
synchronized user db data into sharepoint.

I'm not sure what's the right pattern to do that.

Do I need to implement and declare into the web.config a custom
profile provider or do I need to use the BDC to add a new import
connection?

What are the steps to do that?

There is some sample out there to point me to the right direction on
doing that?

Thanx,
Antonio

[Antonio]

Oh well, due to no reply, I'll restate the question in a more general
way, hoping on some MOSS guru's pity.
I've a FBA Moss 2007 site that use membership and role provider.
Both membership and role providers call WCF services to authenticate
and authorizate the sharepoint form-authenticate users, and all is
fine with that.

Now I need to see and use in SharePoint users profiles and -of course-
the profile data are available through a wcf service call too.
Not sure what pattern to follow here.

Do I need to write a job to read the WCF service data, filling the
sharepoint profile tables via userprofilemanager?
Or do I need to write a profileprovider to see the profiles in
sharepoint without sync sharepoint user profiles tables?
Or both?

Some sample code on that?

Thanx,
Antonio

[spconsultant]

Did some quick googling on your question, here is a good article.

http://blah.winsmarts.com/2007-4-SharePoint_2007__BDC_-_User_Profiles.aspx

An important point made is:

BDC can only work as a supplementary data source, in other words, you
must have an import connection setup with say Active Directory or
something else, before you can choose to supplement that information
from BDC. BDC cannot be your master import connection.

So that speaks to the BDC option, but I suspect it does not take you
much closer to
a solution.