In my previous column "Ripple Has Become a Wave"
(http://www.windowsitpro.com/SQLServer/Article/ArticleID/49304/49304.html),
I invited readers to email me reasons why people might still be using COM in
the business logic behind their Web sites. I received only one email. In it,
the reader said that one reason might be that, "MS never updated the Office
COM interface to .NET, requiring you to completely re-engineer your methods
for providing Excel based reports to users or just use Interop." The reader
went on to mention that "you have plenty of options to get around this
limitation." I got the impression that the reader might not have a solid
understanding of what Microsoft had and hadn't done regarding Office and its
interaction with .NET.
I last mentioned the Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System
(VSTO) in my August 2005 column "The Shifting Sands of Technology"
(http://www.windowsitpro.com/SQLServer/Article/ArticleID/47478/47478.html).
In case you're unfamiliar with VSTO, it's the replacement for COM interop.
With VSTO 2005, you do anything that you can do with interop. And with a
custom task pane, VSTO's capabilities go a long way beyond interop's
capabilities. I was recently involved in a project for a small company in
which we added custom research capability to Microsoft Word. Because we
followed the Microsoft standards for publishing the actual search interfaces,
the custom search was available not only from our own pane in Word but also
from the research pane in any Microsoft Office product and in Microsoft
Internet Explorer (IE) once you installed the search interfaces.
Microsoft Office 2007 (previously code-named Office 12), which Microsoft
plans to ship by the end of this year, will bring enhancements to VSTO. In
addition, developers will be better able to use the Windows .NET Framework to
manipulate Office 2007 products. Some of the changes coming to products such
as Microsoft Outlook are just amazing. You can read about Outlook's design
changes and changes in programming capabilities in Sue Mosher's "A New Look
for Outlook 12" (http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/48710/48710.html).
In addition, you can view slides that specifically address the new
programmatic features in Outlook at
http://www.cookcomputing.com/blog/archives/000489.html.
VSTO currently has two disadvantages, which Microsoft will hopefully
eliminate or at least minimize in Office 2007. The first disadvantage is that
VSTO capabilities in Outlook 2003 are limited compared with its capabilities
in Word 2003 and Microsoft Excel 2003. The second limitation is that clients
need to have Office Professional Edition 2003 installed for VSTO to operate.
VSTO isn't available to clients using Office Standard Edition 2003.
In "The Shifting Sands of Technology," I discussed how VSTO impacts the
development of Windows Forms applications, but I didn't discuss the impact
that Office 2003 is having on Web applications. Although I briefly touched on
this topic in my April 2004 column "SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and
InfoPath--A Dynamic Duo" (http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/42572/42572.html),
that column mainly focused on Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003. Thus, I want to
spend more time discussing SharePoint.
SharePoint lets you upload, version, and manage Office documents and other
project documents straight out of the box. SharePoint, which is the focus
this month's issue of Windows IT Pro magazine
(http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Issues/IssueID/815/Index.html), can be
confusing in that there are actually two SharePoint products: Microsoft
Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
The differences between the products lie in which Microsoft product team owns
the product and what each product costs and does.
In short, SharePoint Portal Server is a product from the Microsoft Office
team and requires separate licensing associated with Office. Many companies
that use SharePoint Portal Server get their licensing through their enterprise
Office licensing. Not surprisingly, the SharePoint Portal Server home page is
on the Office site at http://office.microsoft.com/sharepoint.
SharePoint Portal Server builds on Windows SharePoint Services, which most
people consider the core SharePoint product. Essentially, Windows SharePoint
Services creates independent project sites and SharePoint Portal Server ties
these sites together under a common portal. SharePoint Portal Server also
provides other features, which you can read about at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;830320.
Windows SharePoint Services is a component that's part of and included with
all editions of Windows Server 2003. Thus, you'll find the Windows SharePoint
Services home page on the Windows Server site at
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/sharepoint/default.mspx. Windows SharePoint Services lets you create project-based Web sites and
is used in other Microsoft products. A good developer-focused example is Team
Foundation Server (TFS). The TFS integration with Windows SharePoint Services
is what sets up your project site so that you can combine your source code
repository with a repository for project-related documentation.
Windows SharePoint Services' versatility at providing a standard Web
interface for project teams has made it synonymous with collaboration. The
Microsoft Small Business Server ships with Windows SharePoint Services already
enabled so that small businesses can easily share internal documentation.
Windows SharePoint Services is an "intranet in a box" for companies that are
looking for a low-cost internal tool to manage their shared documents.
Microsoft recognizes that Windows SharePoint Services is an important tool
in its collaboration platform and a direct competitor to existing
collaboration tools, such as Lotus Notes/Lotus Domino. Perhaps that's why
Microsoft recently purchased Groove Networks, a leading provider of workgroup
collaboration software. Microsoft will be working to better integrate Windows
SharePoint Services with tools such as Microsoft FrontPage and InfoPath. These
improvements will make Windows SharePoint Services a more powerful platform by
the end of this year. Working with VSTO, Windows SharePoint Services, and
other Office system tools to develop collaboration, messaging, and other
information-management solutions might even help your company net part of a
$148 billion market, according to Microsoft Partner Capacity Research
(https://partner.microsoft.com/global/competency/iwsolutions). For more
information about Windows SharePoint Services as a part of a collaborative
environment, check out TechNet's collaboration page at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/collaboration/default.mspx.
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