How XML Can Make the Microsoft Office System Data More Valuable?

[Vandam]

I just came to know that using XML in Microsoft Office System, the data becomes more valuable. I have tried to search on the Web but didn't get appropriate results. Since you guys have guided me properly till now, I thought to take some help from you guys.! Please explain me how XML can make the Microsoft Office System Data more valuable? Hope that you got my point and reply me as early as possible.

[Eric B]

By decoupling the data contained within documents from other aspects of the document (layout, Which application created it, and so on), the use of XML in the Microsoft Office system that makes data more available and accessible to developers and power users, more usable by organizations, and more capable of being integrated into existing business processes. Support for extensible Markup Language (XML) in both Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and Microsoft Office Access 2003 is dramatically expanded from what was first offered in the Microsoft Office XP editions.

[Glenny]

With XML, Office developers do not need to know WHERE in a document the data they desire to capture is located. They simply have to know WHAT is defined, or mapped, through an XML schema (XSD). Traditionally, Office developers who wanted to retrieve data from Office documents have been forced to know and refer to the structure of the document. For example, a developer who created a solution that maps to a table in a Word document would have Had to write code that locates the data in the context of the Word document's structure. If an information worker using the document added a table at the top of the document, they would render the data inaccessible to the developer's solution.

[Kirmiac]

XML exposed the information in the document by describing it independently of any formatting information or data location. For example, the same data that before Had to be located in some specific Excel or Word table cell can now be Placed anywhere and simply contained by an XML element for SalesData (the element name is totally definable). Such data would look like :

• <SalesData> Data </ SalesData>

[Zenon]

You can consider an XML is essential tools in the office. The vast majority of data flows within and between firms consists of office documents. The development of specific scenarios necessarily requires consideration of XML directly into the desktop tools. All software XML, not just Microsoft Office 2003 can now handle Office documents :

• Creating and formatting documents on the server.
• Reuse, indexing, full text search of documents.
• Sharing documents across different systems.

[super soaker]

The following are the XML capabilities of Word :

1. Save a document in Word format XML.
2. Associate an XSD schema to the Word template. Tagging and validation of the document content via XML Schema.
3. Incorporate any content static or dynamic XML in the document.
4. Rich programming around the DOM XML in VBA.
5. Support for XPath, content re-use of XML via XPath + XSL.