Proposal for new module: arbitrary db access in Form Builder/Browser

[AndyHolyer]

At our site we have a need to pull together a wide range of different forms of information (marks, timetables, HR data etc.) which are held on a variety of departments on a variety of applications spread over three main campuses.

The vast majority of these are on SQL databases of one form or another (I have as yet no idea how to cope with the stuff which isn't SQL-accesible), but political issues ensure that we won't have all the information in one consistent layout, on one local database, ever. Note that we are not guaranteed personal access to all the databases, so setting up views is not a practical solution, and I'd not be surprised if not all systems allow views functionality after all.

So I propose to create a sub-class of Form builder which allows a disposition database element, but which instead of using CMSMS's own database allows arbitrary ODBC connections and arbitrary SQL queries to be plugged in.

Would I be right in thinking that I need to override the Load, Store and Delete methods inherited from FieldBase.class ?
Anything else? I haven't written a module before, so any guidance on how I make the parameter dialoges etc. would be useful.

Hell, any advice would be useful.

Thanks in Adv.