The Data View Web Part is often under utilized but has vast capabilities in SharePoint, it can be used to perform the following:

  • Define a query and data source from which to retrieve the XML data. Data sources can be SharePoint lists or external databases such as Microsoft SQL Server.
  • Define the XSLT transformation that converts XML retrieved from the data source into HTML. FrontPage offers a WYSIWYG experience for editing these XSLT views, including live data preview.

    • More details at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_SP2003_ta/html/OfficeSharePointDDWRT.asp