Mission accomplished

The paragraphs of text in Screen 2 are bound to a rich-text edit control. It delivers well-formed XHTML output, which InfoPath stores in a properly namespaced element in the XML data file. That's the good news. The bad news is that this editor is otherwise not much of an improvement over the widely used and much-maligned DHTML edit control, which emits horrid HTML cluttered with inline font tags and other junk. (These complaints also apply to InfoPath's CSS-less HTML renderings of entire views.) I suppose InfoPath does not want to steal Word 2003's thunder, but a more competent editing widget would be a welcome addition. Perhaps Microsoft intends to leave that door open for third-party components from Ektron, Altova, and others.

Free IT resource TechNet: More ways to know it, share it, and keep it running. Sponsored by Microsoft Free IT resource Attend the SOA Executive Forum: Breaking SOA Bottlenecks SOAExecForum.com/may2007 Sponsored by InfoWorld Microsoft InfoPath 2003 Beta 2 Microsoft, microsoft.com Business Case: The Web services movement envisions a world full of SOAP endpoints, but it has not yet paid enough attention to one special kind of endpoint: the human being. When SOAP packets begin to flow through e-mail and reside on file servers and intranet Web sites -- as they inevitably must -- tools such as InfoPath will prove their worth. Technology Case: XML documents are the currency of the emerging business Web. InfoPath empowers business users to design those documents, fill them with data, and exchange them while guaranteeing the fidelity of that data and shielding the documents from the underlying XML machinery. Pros: + Intuitive, end-user-accessible tools for designing and gathering structured data + Built on open XML and Web standards + Automatically writes data definitions (XML Schema) and transformations (XSLT) Cons: - Advanced data validation isn't expressed in XML Schema - Rich-text editor not very capable - No built-in .Net programming interfaces Cost: TBD Platforms: Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3, Windows XP Ship Date: Summer 2003

Alternative views

One of InfoPath's delights is the ease with which you can create various, live-editable views of your data. Screen 3 shows a simplified view that omits the book metadata to focus more clearly on the structure of the search results. Screen 4 shows a titles-only view. The user can switch among these views by selecting them from InfoPath's View menu. To create a view, you just open a new canvas, then repeat the process of dragging elements from the data source and binding them to controls. InfoPath automatically writes the XSLT transformations that produce the view. One caveat: If you restructure an element that's included in more than one view, you'll have to restructure it in every view. An XML element is reusable across a whole InfoPath project, but the binding of a data element to a display widget is not. The latter capability would be a nice enhancement.

Saving InfoPath-generated XML in a plain text file is extremely useful. It doesn't matter whether you post or e-mail that file; either way, another user who has access to the .xsn file can view and edit the data. InfoPath's schema-, XSLT-, and script-based validation tools conspire to preserve the data's fidelity. You can also arrange to post results back to a Web service or a server that receives raw HTTP POST requests. Using the latter (and simpler) strategy, I easily arranged to route InfoPath postings to an indexed column of a Virtuoso database.

InfoPath is scriptable in a browserlike way. It presents a Document Object Model which you can manipulate from JavaScript. As has been widely noted, .Net programmers will be disappointed to find no managed-code hooks. There are lots of ways to get at InfoPath's XML data, though, and it's important to note that the product does not mainly target developers. Its unique mission is to empower business users to design, gather, view, and exchange packets of XML data. It succeeds on those terms, and in so doing, defines a new and strategic category of desktop software. Built on open standards, it invites competitors to step up to the plate -- and I hope they will. What InfoPath does will come to be seen as an essential function of the decentralized business Web.