Microsoft Office 2003 and Research Services Development Extras

Very shortly, we will publish the Research Services Development Extras
(RSDE) on our MSDN Office Developer Center (https://msdn.microsoft.com/office). I
wanted to give you a heads-up on what's involved. If you have written your
Research Service for Office 2003, you have noticed that there is a fair amount
of XML work that could be encapsulated so as to eliminate busy work. In your Web
service that communicates with Office, you need to volley back and forth with
Office in XML streams that conform to the Research Service schemas. This work
can get repetitive because it is predictable and straight-forward, and that
makes it a good candidate for a wrapper. This wrapper is done, and it is in the
RSDE download. We have also included a very cool trace utility that lets you
intercept the XML converstation going on between Office and your Web service.
Here's a screen shot of a capture I just did:

This lets you inspect and troubleshoot the communication going on
between the two parties in the Research Service relationship. If you are new to
Research Services in Office, may I recommend:

Overview
(end-user)

Overview
(training)

Research
Services Development on MSDN

Research
Services SDK

The
Definitive Hello World Research Services Tutorial

Rock Thought
for the day:
If you have never listened to Machina/The
Machines of God
or if you do not own it, get it. This is so polished, so
thorough, so clever, yet so unguarded and real. If Billy Corgan were 15 years
older, I believe he would have been part of the Prog rock scene of the 70's, but
he is much more sublte and keenly ware of the commerical aspect to his art. This
awareness yields infectious riffs and melodies that powerfully
transcend the risk of a cliché.

Rock on