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Office file manipulation used to be difficult, but since Office 2007, Word, Excel and Powerpoint files can be read and written without anything more complicated than the native JDK itself because Office 2007 documents are now nothing more than ZIP files of XML documents. Ted Neward demonstrates this in action.
PowerTools for Open XML is a PowerShell extension that makes it easy to create and manipulate MS Office documents from the command line.
Microsoft's attempt to officially standardize the Office Open XML Format (OOXML) by the ISO-Standards ISO/IEC DIS 29500 has failed. National standard bodies have been asked to give their vote on OOXML by September 2.
Rob Weir has called the spreadsheet formulas into question. Lost in the posturing and grandstanding are some serious holes in the specification.
With the new OpenXML format, there is the promise of an clean and efficient way to manipulate Office documents via XML. But with a 6000+ page spec, finding the exact nodes one needs to manipulate is a non-trivial task. To address this, OpenXML libraries for both Java and .NET are in the works.
Microsoft has been touting a new way to build composite applications using the acronym, “OBA”. The intended sweet spot for OBA is within the Lines of Business within the greater Enterprise cloud. The OBA framework capitalizes on the large number of Microsoft Office licenses that have been sold world-wide.
Microsoft has released a new tool for bulk converting MS Office files from the older binary format to the Office 2007 format OpenXML. The question is, should you use it?
In the on going debate between ODF and OpenXML, two things are becoming clear. The first is that both ODF and OpenXML are essentially proprietary formats dressed up to be open standards. The second is neither IBM nor Microsoft is going to back down.
One of the most hotly debated areas in the OpenXML spec is the number of partially documented compatibility flags. But as we see, ODF isn't innocent in this area either.
