SQL Server is able to open excel sheets (xlsx), access databases (mdb) and other data streams using data providers (e.g. JET, ACE) and OPENROWSET.
Are there similar facilities to extract data from a remote webservice ? Using OPENROWSET and providing it a web service driver and URL and some schema definition to translate the hierarchical nature of the webservice XML output into a table that SQL Server can query on.
I'm thinking of something like:
select * from
OPENROWSET('WEBSERVICE.4.0.PROVIDER','http://mydomain/webservice.asmx')
That's a high level question, although I know it's conceptually possible, I'd like to know if there are any implementations of this idea.
Thanks