InfoPath 2010 known issue with SharePoint 2010

In a recent proof of concept project which was to show the capabilities of SharePoint 2010 the aim was to use as much of the Microsoft 2010 technology as possible so this could be demonstrated.  Included in this was the use of Microsoft InfoPath 2010 for designing forms.

While working with InfoPath Designer an error occurred that prevented InfoPath
connecting to a SharePoint site.  This was initially found when running the Data Connection Wizard which looks to establish a connection to a site and then a library or list.

A similar error will also happen when creating an InfoPath form from Designer and when attempting to publish this to the SharePoint Site.  But from within a SharePoint list there is an option to enable Forms and to then open InfoPath against that list to create the library.  So this enables a workaround initially to creating a form for a library list display and is enabled when InfoPath Designer 2010 is available on the client machine.

We are now able to create an InfoPath form display against a SharePoint list but if we then try and create data connections to other lists with lookups, etc then we again hit the problem above.

So why is this?  Well a Microsoft article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981854) explains more but basically InfoPath will run a check against SharePoint for its version and this is done against the top level site collection of a web application.  If you don’t create a top level site collection then bang your InfoPath client fails with this error.  Unfortunately the Microsoft resolution is ‘create a top level site collection’ which doesn’t help if your design choice is not to have one.