The ice_messaging drupal module is used to access the MS SQL database containing the received ICE messages.

Some of the drupal 7 documentation still refers to the old syntax for database queries, even while demonstrating the drupal database abstraction layer. The best and most consistent documentation for building database queries is ​http://drupal.org/node/310075

ice_messaging uses the datatables module to provide fancy presentation. The datatables modules requires manual installation of the DataTables jQuery plugin, and this is very fussy about directory names. Just be careful.

Within drupal, switching to the alternative database is done using:

  db_set_active('YourDatabaseKey');

  // execute queries here

  db_set_active(); // without the paramater means set back to the default for the site