We're excited to announce the newest update to FilterZen, the ultimate Filter Web Part for SharePoint. Among minor bug fixes and optimizations, this service release 2.4 introduces a brand-new, highly useful filter type: SQL Data Filters.

SQL Data Filters work similar to List Lookup Filters: the filter value (or in interactive mode, the list of pickable filter choices) is derived dynamically on the fly from some pre-defined data source. Whereas any SharePoint List or Document Library can serve as the data source to the latter filter type, the former can use any ADO.NET-compatible data source and therefore all major databases, including SQL Server and Oracle. Via ODBC or OLEDB, you may also fetch the data from Microsoft Access databases or even spreadsheets. All you need to do is specify your connection information and query and you're good to go.

More filtering power to you!