Hi,
One of the most interesting things of the InfoPath BDC Creator is the ability to edit your own files, in order to change some elements or add new sections, etc.
This can be achieved by adding the necessary Processing Instruction in order to open with InfoPath based on the Tool template.
If you have the Tool in a disk location, you will need to change the href to point to that location. Open the xml with notepad, delete any PI (<?*****?>) and add the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><?mso-infoPathSolution solutionVersion="0.1.0.91" productVersion="12.0.0" PIVersion="1.0.0.0" href="file:///C:\path\InfoPath%20BDC%20Creator.xsn" name="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:InfoPath-BDC-Creator:http---schemas-microsoft-com-office-2006-03-BusinessDataCatalog" language="es-ES" ?><?mso-application progid="InfoPath.Document" versionProgid="InfoPath.Document.2"?>
(the language will vary based on your current language. es-ES for Spain)
On the other hand if you have published the Template into a forms library, the header of the file will look like this one:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><?mso-infoPathSolution solutionVersion="0.1.0.94" productVersion="12.0.0" PIVersion="1.0.0.0" href="http://serverpath/Forms/template.xsn" name="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:infopath:formularios:http---schemas-microsoft-com-office-2006-03-BusinessDataCatalog" language="es-ES" ?><?mso-application progid="InfoPath.Document" versionProgid="InfoPath.Document.2"?>
(I'll talk about relink functionality in other entry)
This can allow us to create a BDC Library in order to store and manage BDC versioning files, in the Central Administration Site. A nice feature would be to create a BDC Library with a custom action in order to deploy the selected file into Business Data Catalog, and manage with a workflow which ones are actually deployed, and marked as metadata of the file.
I have tested it with the MSDN AdventureWorksDW SQL Server, AdventureWorks2000 PassThrough Metadata Sample , SampleWebService Metadata here is a screenshot:
You may experience that the InfoPath is a bit slow, as the whole file renders. And I’m still checking the AmazonSample.
Enjoy!
Maybe you have read about projects for supporting UOF. Similar approach to the ODF support.
You can check them at:
What I wasn't aware of, is the study to merge both formats. I can extract some text from the article:
One reason has to do with the formats' allocation of their respective namespaces. The Lab described the UOF schema as being much more structured, replete, and flexible, while certain parts of the ODF schema seem more arbitrary.
This seems a real example of a possible future evolution of the current ODF format, sort of anounce at Brian Jones blog. The conclusion was a conversor http://odf-to-uof.sourceforge.net/overview.html
Cheers!
P.S.
You can check the announcement at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/may07/05-20UOFODFPR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases
One of my favorites projects are those related to document generation. With Office 2007, we can open ECMA-376 / Open XML documents (.docx, .xlsx, etc..).
There are several tools to manage OpenXML files (Office 2007) that I want you to be aware:
General
Docx
Xlsx
Living in the IW World, when I read time ago about Tahiti project, Tahoe (SharePoint v1 CodeName) came to my mind... Tahiti is now SharedView Live Project.
http://get.live.com/betas/sharedview_betas
I really like the top bar with the menu. When you start a session, you receive a message in order to accept the request. You can share an application or whatever you want, and it works really well.
Mini-Groove_LiveMeeting-adBased :) you should try it.
Viva Piñata!
After hearing news about Astoria Project, I realized it will be a good candidate for blog publishing.
You can manage feeds with Windows RSS Platform and although it is named RSS, it really support any RSS or Atom version (Syndication). But It has not support (and it is not intented for it) publishing support (Atom is in draft ietf http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-14.txt)
There are several API (Atom, MetaWeblog, LiveJournal, Blogger...moving to GData), and I think there is the possibility of improvement here.
You can read more about Astoria Project at its web site, but a brief summary from the site, seems helpful:
The goal of Microsoft Codename Astoria is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within a corporate network and across the internet. The data service is reachable over HTTP, and URIs are used to identify the various pieces of information available through the service. Interactions with the data service happens in terms of HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE, and the data exchanged in those interactions is represented in simple formats such as XML and JSON.
I was just imagine a module for Community Server or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, in order to interact with the blog engine to publish and manage posts and related information, and update weblog clients to use it as Windows Live Writer.
The DataService should match a standard schema, for blogs, so having a http://server/blogs/blogs.rse would show the entities (Tags, Categories, Posts, etc..), and URIs for the system would be possible in a quicker way:
The client could have the possibility to interact in XML or JSON, so AJAX interfaces should become easier to build and test.
Some of the issues with others API should be address, as for example:
It would be great to create a prototype ;) isn't it?