MSDN Follow-up: Visual Studio Tools for Office

First things first.... you can download the content from my SkyDrive below.

Next, let's address the unanswered questions I recall from the sessions.  Again, if I missed your question, just shoot me a quick e-mail.

1. Where can I download the prerequisites for VSTO applications?
2. How can I interface Excel with an cube from SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)?

Where can I download the prerequisites for VSTO applications?

As we discussed, there are three prerequisites for running VSTO applications on the client machine.  If you are using Visual Studio 2008 SP1, all three are bootstrapped automatically when you deploy via the Publish (Click-Once) option.  Prior to SP1, you had to get the Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs) for the appropriate version of Office as an extra step.  See Mary Lee's blog post if you want to add this as a prerequisite, and you haven't yet installed SP1. 

Here are links to the individual downloads.  Note, there are service packs to .NET 3.5 and VSTO 3.0 that must be in concert:

• .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1  OR
  .NET Framework Client Profile Offline Installer

• Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system (version 3.0 Runtime) Service Pack 1

• 2007 Microsoft Office System Update: Redistributable Primary Interop Assemblies AND/OR
  Office 2003 Update: Redistributable Primary Interop Assemblies

How can I use VSTO to interface Excel with an cube from SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)?

First, a disclaimer!  SSAS is not an area with which I have much familiarity; however, I did find a few resources that seem to be relevant.  If you know of others, or find the following links are way out in left field, please let me know.

• OLAP Pivot Table Extensions for Excel (on CodePlex) - an Excel add-in built with VSTO 2005.  Since CodePlex is an open-source site, you'd be able to adapt what is here to your needs.

• ADOMD.NET - this seems like a good lead, providing a data provider for SSAS that you could, of course, leverage with VSTO.

• Article on accessing data from an OLAP server with Excel - this article is pretty dated (it used SQL Analysis Server 2000), but the content may remain relevant.

• OBA Composition Reference Toolkit - this appears to be a resource for anyone contemplating a large-scale OBAs.  There's a ton of sample code, and requirements and interfaces to SSAS are listed in the prerequisites, but I'm not certain there's anything specific to cubes.