Office 2003 XML

In Microsoft's Office 2003, users experience the merger of the power of the classic Office suite of applications with the fluidity of data exchange inherent in XML. With XML at its heart, the new version of Microsoft's desktop suite liberates the information stored in millions of documents created with Office software over the past fifteen years, making it available to a wide variety of programs.

Office 2003 XML offers an in-depth exploration of the relationship between XML and Office 2003, examining how the various products in the Office suite both produce and consume XML. Developers will learn how they can connect Microsoft Office to others systems, while power users will learn to create and analyze XML documents using familiar Office tools.

The book begins with an overview of the XML features included in the various Office 2003 components, and explores in detail how Word, Excel, and Access interact with XML. This book covers both the user interface side, creating interfaces so that users can comfortably (and even unknowingly) work with XML, and the back end, exposing Office information to other processes. It also looks at Microsoft's new InfoPath application and how it fits with the rest of Office. Finally, the book's appendices introduce various XML technologies that may be useful in working with Office, including XSLT, W3C XML Schema, RELAX NG, and SOAP. Office 2003 XML provides quick and clear guidance to a anyone who needs to import or export information from Office documents into other systems. Both XML programmers and Office power will learn how to get the most from this powerful new intersection between Office 2003 and XML.

Intended for developers and advanced Office users, this book introduces the new XML capabilities added to the 2003 release of the Office suite, and explains how to create XML documents and templates in WordprocessingML and Excel's SpreadsheetML. It also presents XSLT scripts for WordprocessingML, describes the web services toolkit, and walks through two InfoPath solutions for collecting data. Annotation © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Evan Lenz is principal of Lenz Consulting Group, an XML consulting firm. He's author of XSLT 1.0 Pocket Reference and co-author of Office 2003 XML, has served as invited expert on the W3C XSL Working Group, and most recently has taken on XBRL consulting projects, for clients including XBRL International. Lenz Consulting Group provides an array of services including content strategy consulting, custom XML training, XML information modeling, XQuery, XSLT, and XSL-FO development, specification design, and representation on standards bodies.

Mary McRae is the Director of Technical Committee Administration for OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, and as such provides front-line support for OASIS committees and the standards they produce. She works with OASIS TC chairs, guiding them through the OASIS technical process and helping them reach the goals and objectives of their charters. Mary also serves on the OASIS Technical Advisory Board. She joined the OASIS staff in 2004, but she has been an active member of the Consortium since 1995, serving on the OASIS Board of Directors in 1999. Mary became involved in structured markup languages in 1992, while working for Butterworth Legal Publishers, where she mastered the nuances of document analysis, DTD development, structured editors, and content management systems. Later, as Vice President of XML Solutions and Principal XML Technologist for DMSi, she used her skills at project management, needs analysis, requirements definition, product selection, schema development, application customization, and training to help clients avoid the pitfalls she encountered herself as an early adopter. Sandwiched in between, Mary was the Manager of Sales Support for Xyvision (now XyEnterprise), focusing on SGML/XML content management solutions. Mary is co-author of "Office 2003 XML" and a frequent speaker at industry conferences. In her spare time, Mary is a textile artist. She is based in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, USA.

Simon St. Laurent is a web developer, network administrator, computer book author, and XML troublemaker living in Ithaca, NY. His books include XML: A Primer, XML Elements of Style, Building XML Applications, Cookies, and Sharing Bandwidth. He is a contributing editor to XMLhack.com and an occasional contributor to XML.com.