VSTO 2005 is a component of Visual
Studio. It provides C# and VB.NET developers with tools for
building applications that leverage standard
Office programs like Word, Excel, and InfoPath, all in an environment
that matches the development, security, and deployment of existing .NET applications.
VSTO is another example of how Microsoft is extending classic Office products through the
use of XML and Web services. Developers that use VSTO 2005 can
take advantage of their .NET skills to build Office application
without having to learn the specific Office object
models.
Key Features
Here are a few of the many exciting new
features VSTO 2005 has to offer:
(1) Programming is done with .NET. This offers the same development
and deployment procedures that exist today. Developers can leverage existing investments
in XML and Web services technologies to build Office-based
applications.
(2) VSTO 2005 uses XML
to separate the data from the presentation. Data is stored
in an Office document as a data island (XML that holds structured
data). This allows developers to programatically change the
underlying data without affecting the stability of the Office
application. For anyone who has written Excel VBA, this is a big deal! Gone is
the notion of writing hundreds of lines of
VBA code against the Office object mode, referring to data like Sheets("mysheet").range("a1").value. References
are now more defined (i.e. Industry.ID) and not dependent
on locking down the rows and columns in your
spreadsheet.
(3) VSTO 2005 allows for
the development of Managed Action Panes. Managed Action
Panes are the task panes on the right side of the Office
interface. They replace the dialog boxes used in VBA-based
development. The Managed Action Panes provide a better look
and feel to the application and are context sensitive so they
can be changed based on where in the document
a user has clicked. Managed Action Panes offer a great way to
more easily facilitate data entry and online
help.
(4) Elements in Office documents are treated as controls. As an
example, Excel development can be facilitated by treating elements like cells or ranges as
controls.
(5) Data
capabilities have been extended for both client and server side
manipulation. Again, because the data has been separated
from the presentation, through the use of a data island, documents
on your laptop can refer to data on a server. This provides
developers with the opportunity to alter the data without having
to open or alter the document. When the document is opened
again, the refreshed data will automatically be leveraged.
This is a very powerful feature; one that really drives the
message around Microsoft's vision of extending connected Office
applications in the enterprise.
VSTO 2005 is currently available as beta
software. The latest version can be downloaded as part of
the Visual Studio 2005 beta. VSTO 2005 will be officially
released with the distribution of Visual Studio 2005, scheduled
for late summer. There continues to be additional training
material posted on sites like www.officezealot.com
and a fully functional estimation
sample using VSTO 2005 was recently posted on MSDN.
VSTO 2005 offers .NET developers, familiar with XML and Web services, the ability to
leverage existing skills to quickly and effectively build robust
Office-based applications.
