Available as a free* download from MSDN® in January 2002, the Microsoft Office XP Web Services Toolkit enables developers to quickly and easily discover, reference, and integrate XML Web services in their custom Office XP solutions. Here is a quick summary of the key features in this toolkit and how you can use them:
- Use a UDDI service to find an XML Web service. Search for XML Web services using the open, standards-based UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) Registry. You can easily search by keyword or business.
- Make sure it's the right XML Web service for you. Read descriptions of XML Web service results and their associated methods. You can even run a test on any of the XML Web services in the result (if the XML Web service supplies a test page).
- Directly link to known Web services. Advanced developers can use a known XML Web service by linking directly to a Web service description file (.wsdl or .vsdisco).
- Add a reference to an XML Web service. Once you've found the XML Web service to include in your solution, you can add a reference to it with a single click. All of the methods associated with an XML Web service are available in Microsoft Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) by means of proxy classes, which are created with standard VBA classes based on the Microsoft SOAP Toolkit 2.0.
- Do advanced customization. Source code of the generated VBA classes is available to the developer so that he or she can see how the XML Web service is accessed using SOAP and can customize it.
- Utilize existing productivity tools. The added XML Web service objects support Microsoft IntelliSense® access to the methods and parameters available from the XML Web service.
- Read documentation and white papers. You'll get comprehensive documentation on discovering and integrating XML Web services—including technical white papers on using XML Web services within your custom Office XP solutions.
- View samples that illustrate XML Web services integration. The samples included provide real examples on how XML Web services can be integrated into custom Office XP solutions using Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word.
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