Open XML and the SharePoint Conference

SharePoint conference is just a few days away. We are thrilled that in an era of shrinking shows and budgets, we're able to have a sold out conference dedicated to learning about Office and SharePoint 2010. It will be an exciting week.

A positive trend in Office development is the migration of solutions away from in-application scripted processing toward more data-centric development. Of course this is a primary purpose of Open XML, and it is great to see the amount of activity in this area. We've seen customers scripting Word in a server environment to batch process / print documents or for other automation tasks. In reality Word isn't built to do that on a large scale, it is better to work directly against the document rather than via the application whenever possible.

The Open XML SDK unlocks a "whole nuther" environment for document processing, and gets you out of the business of scripting client apps on servers to do the work of a true server application (not to mention the licensing problems created by installing Office on a server). We'll have the Open XML SDK in many sessions at the show.

I am also very excited about the Application Compatibility Program for Office 2010, and in the next post on this blog, we'll go into deep detail about what we're planning for the 2010 release. App compat is a very important area for our customers, ensuring solutions can be easily migrated between versions of Office will help those IT's & Devs charged with migrating masses of desktops to a new version. – this should be easier than ever with 2010 if we've done our job correctly. (Hint: If you'd like a sneak peek at one of the new app compat tools we're planning, hop onto connect and give this a test drive.)

You'll see these stickers about. Intergen is sponsoring a promotion for OpenXMLDeveloper.org at the show. Be sure to get your sticker from them as you see them around.

In terms of Open XML session content, there's plenty to enjoy. I'm adding a sample of the sessions from the show. Some sessions have an explicit focus on Open XML, but Open XML is present in most of them for various reasons.

Title	Timeslot
Overview of the SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform	10/19/2009 13:15
What's New in Office 2010 for Developers	10/19/2009 14:45
Overview of Visio Services 2010	10/19/2009 14:45
What's new in Office 2010? (Overview)	10/19/2009 14:45
Report on SharePoint data with Access 2010	10/19/2009 16:30
Building Applications on SharePoint with Access Services	10/20/2009 9:00
Building OBAs using Business Connectivity Services and SharePoint Designer	10/20/2009 10:30
SharePoint 2010 Based Document Assembly and Manipulation	10/20/2009 10:30
Understanding Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps	10/20/2009 13:15
Deep Dive Open XML and the Open XML SDK	10/20/2009 13:15
Office 2007 vs. Office 2010 - Deployment Considerations	10/20/2009 14:45
Co-authoring with Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps	10/20/2009 14:45
Creating Office 2010 Add-Ins using SharePoint as a Data Source	10/20/2009 14:45
Office Web Apps – Deployment and Manageability	10/20/2009 16:30
UI Extensibility and Customization in Office 2010 Applications	10/20/2009 16:30
Develop Advanced Access Web Databases & Publish to SharePoint	10/21/2009 10:30
SharePoint Workspace 2010: the Microsoft Office Client for Team Sites	10/21/2009 13:15
Creating OBA Solutions with Business Connectivity Services (BCS)	10/21/2009 13:15
Managing Access Databases in Your Organization	10/21/2009 13:15
Open XML Development for Office 2010 and Beyond	10/21/2009 14:45
Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Development	10/21/2009 16:30
Access Services: Under the Hood	10/22/2009 9:00
Leveraging Excel Services in Office 2010 Client and Windows	10/22/2009 9:00
Office 2010 Client Security	10/22/2009 10:30
Office 2010 Application and Feature Compatibility	10/22/2009 10:30
Form-driven Mashups Using InfoPath and Forms Services 2010	10/22/2009 10:30
InfoPath 2010: Form Design Best Practices	10/22/2009 12:00

There is so much for us to share at SPC. If you are planning to attend, please stop by our booth(s) and say hello. For those not attending, we'll do our best to share that information on my blog and across MSDN, Channel 9 and more.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  excellent points, good read, thank you