Is there any snippet to query tables outsite modx?

Hi,
I am thinking of using modx in my new website development.
I got really impressed by the functionalities that ditto offers but I have the following question:

I need to develop a website for an state agent.
This website it has to have the tipical house search by type, location, price .etc.
Because the houses database is located in a Microsoft SQL server (There is a windows application which updates ..etc this database) I will have to query this database from modx.

Is there any snippet that could help me to do sp? I have been looking at them but I could find it.

Have you got any suggestion of how I could do it?

I understand that if i will have the house in my document tree I would have any problem, I could use ditto and it will be quite stright forward. But unfortunatly my database is outsite the modx enviroment.

Thanks a lot,

Uri

You could also use PDO to connect to MS SQL and work with it directly, if you have PHP 5.1.x or later available with the proper drivers installed in your environment.

Thanks for your answer.

Defenitly I can not migrate the database to MySql. The client updates the database trough a windows application.

The second option I am not really sure about it. Can I perform queries over a XML file?

The PDO option or other database abstraction library sounds great. I guess there will be some snippets allready programmed to do so.

Does somebody know about them? I can’t be the first one who has to do it.

Tanks again,

Uri