I have done many investigations into the best ways of getting supplementary profile data sources (i.e. from sources other than Active Directory) and the following are some considerations one should review before constructing a solution.
SharePoint can connect the enterprise, and user profile data is no exception. The most common approach is to use an Active Directory implementation as the master source for user profile data. Another option for a master data source is to use LDAP. But what do you do when you wish to have data from other systems 'integrated' with your user profiles in SharePoint 2007? Well, the real answer is… It depends…
First, here are the options for including supplementary sources in user profiles:
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Business Data Catalog (BDC)
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Databases
Problem with the BDC and User Profiles:
The first gotcha surrounds multivalued columns. It is great that SharePoint User Profiles now support the concept of multivalued columns, however you should carefully consider what I view as a major problem with using the BDC for supplemantry data when one or more mapped column is multivalued. According to a Microsoft TechNet article on Map[ping] User Profile Properties discussing the BDC: "Multivalued properties can be mapped …, but only the first value is imported." This is disappointing and an issue I hope Microsoft addresses in the near future. I would have used the BDC completely for supplementary profile data, but this one limitation meant that could not use the BDC as multivalue columns would be incomplete and therefore unacceptable.
-Does SharePoint really care about the original user profile data location?
-A changing world – Wrapping up the sources
craiglussier