
Steve Sloan on BizTalk Server 2006 R2
InfoQ talked to Steve Sloan, Senior Product Manager, about the BizTalk Server 2006 R2 in the context of SOA.

InfoQ talked to Steve Sloan, Senior Product Manager, about the BizTalk Server 2006 R2 in the context of SOA.
When working with Excel documents, developers usually use raw XML or rely on the Office Automation libraries. But the Office Automation library is not appropriate for servers and working with XML can be quite tedious. ClosedXML bridges the gap by providing an easy to use Office-like API without the overhead of COM. To introduce this library we spoke with Manuel De Leon of the ClosedXML project.
Open XML SDK 2.0 offers a moderately high level API for manipulating Open XML documents using strongly typed classes. It includes the Open XML SDK v2.0 Productivity Tool, which can reverse engineer a Word, PowerPoint, or Excel document and display the C# code needed to recreate it.
Visual Basic for Applications is a dead-end and Visual Studio for Applications isn’t ready for prime time, leaving developers in the uncomfortable position of trying to mix .NET code with legacy VBA macros. Fortunately Visual Studio Tools for Office makes it relatively painless.
Ted Neward points us towards a solid piece by Bruce Wilson about increasing the power and usability of enterprise applications by using Microsoft Office as your client instead of a browser. And as Ted points out, this strategy can be a great option even if your backend is Java or any other Web Service aware platform.
Microsoft Office developers have long bragged about their ability to control pretty much anything in Office via COM automation. But unbeknownst to most, OpenOffice developers have a few tricks up their sleeve.
Microsoft has announced that it will release the OOXML SDK despite the fact that ISO did not approve OOXML as an open standard last September.
Adobe recently acquired Virtual Ubiquity, the creators of Buzzword - a web based word processor. InfoQ.com connected with David Coletta and Tad Staley of Adobe Systems to learn more about the product, the challenges and benefits of using Adobe Flex for its development, and what the future holds for the product.
Ruport, the Ruby reporting tool, was just released in version 1.2. Meanwhile, the Ruport Book effort is coming along as well.