Web Service Integration with MS Office
Up until now, Office Automation mainly involved writing macros that took information between Office applications and solved business problems across a LAN.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft is targeting its Web services as the next area where Office Automation should make an impact. Databases in Access or Excel will be able to seamlessly (a favorite Microsoft word) integrate with Web services created with Visual Studio. An entire conference pretty much dedicated to this concept is taking place in Redmond in February.
So far, I've been ecstatic if I could automate a chart in Excel appearing in PowerPoint; I am not really a programmer, and Web services are a bit beyond my area of expertise. But I have a feeling that that may change, because the proliferation of applications that run on the Web, not just on a Microsoft network, is exploding. For example, MSN is offering a free version of Outlook 2003 for business users who want to share calendars and contacts online, without MS Exchange, called Outlook Live. That program is currently in beta and expected early next year.
To me, that's probably the mother of all Web services: Outlook and MSN together, based on one of the original Web services (Exchange).
Look for ways to implement similar solutions by using macros in Office and connecting to server-based applications created in-house, and not just at Microsoft.
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