• Illustration: Designing a Form with XDocs

XDocs is an XML-oriented forms design and processing tool scheduled for release in mid-2003—about the same time as the next version of Office. Although few product details have been revealed, XDocs will give business and consumers the ability to work with XML-based forms and data, and will complement the XML capabilities of Office itself. Though touted as a simple way to work with XML, XDocs is likely to require configuration or development input before it is usable in specific scenarios.

What Is XDocs?

XML is becoming widely used—for example, Web services exchange data in XML and some recent Microsoft applications store configuration information in XML files. However, XML is difficult for nonexperts to use effectively. XDocs aims to solve that problem by combining a familiar document authoring interface, with capabilities such as spell-checking, and a forms entry interface that can ensure data is entered accurately. XDocs gives nonexperts a way to create, view, and modify XML documents. (For a look at a form displayed in XDocs, see the illustration "Designing a Form with XDocs".)

XDocs could fill an important gap in the critical Web services market because direct user interaction with Web services remains complex. Smaller companies, in particular, might not have the resources to create and manage Web services, and this inability could hamper their relationships with vendors, government agencies, or partners that develop Web services. XDocs allows organizations to rapidly create XML-formatted documents and forms, or enter data into forms supplied by partners. This data can then be used by Web services.

As its name suggests, XDocs emerged from Microsoft’s NetDocs effort, a project that was originally aimed at designing a new collaboration interface for knowledge workers but has since been folded into Office development. Although Microsoft has been building XML features into Office since Office 2000, these features have not offered the full range of XML capabilities, requiring, among other things, that documents use only particular schemas. XDocs has no such limitation.

Advantages of XDocs

XDocs brings several capabilities to the business desktop, including the following:

Rapid creation of XML documents by entering data in a simple form.

A forms development tool that allows controls such as list boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, and other forms elements to be laid out on a screen.

XML schema development by using XDocs to create new schemas or modify templates that Microsoft supplies.

Offline use of forms downloaded from the Web. Data entered into forms on the Web must typically be entered in a single, online session. If the user stops the process, data that has been entered is lost. XDocs will allow people to access a form on the Web, work on it as needed offline, and then submit the completed form back to the Web site.

More accurate data entry through XML validation. XML text can be validated against the associated schema—for example, to ensure that data denoting an item's price is entered as a value appropriate for currency. Other forms-authoring tools, including Word and Excel, require custom macros in many cases, but XML schemas give XDocs a built-in mechanism for validating data.

Word-processing features. Features such as spell checking and grammar checking will be built into XDocs. Such features are rare in standard data-entry interfaces.

The XML Authoring Marketplace

XDocs enters a sparsely populated market and may already be the most widely known XML editor, thanks to Microsoft’s clout. Competitors include Altova’s Authentic, Arbortext’s Epic Editor, and Corel’s XMetal. Several open-source XML authoring tools are also available or under development.

How XDocs compares with these products, or even with the XML features being touted for the next version of Office (Office 11), is difficult to say, however. Microsoft has not announced how XDocs will be priced or licensed, or how it will fit into the Office family of products, although it appears that it will be a standalone product that complements other products in the Office family.

Microsoft says that new XML capabilities will be a major feature of Office 11, and XDocs might be an important tool for those who want to take advantage of those features: XDocs could be used to develop basic forms or schemas that can be used by other Office components.

Given the complexities of XML development, however, organizations will want to proceed carefully in rolling out XDocs. Microsoft says high-end users, such as those who write their own Excel formulas, should be able to use XDocs to design forms and schemas, but less-skilled employees are likely to rely more heavily on their organization’s developers in order to use XDocs effectively.

Other Microsoft Forms and Data Entry Options

Although XDocs appears to face relatively little competition from other XML authoring tools, it could overlap with some of Microsoft’s own products.

Organizations commonly use Microsoft tools such as Visual Basic (VB) and Access, both of which offer a forms paradigm for building user interfaces, to build data entry forms that deliver data to back-end databases and allow users to view and modify data. In some cases, XDocs might offer an easier way to get the same result.

VB and Access will be a better choice when desktop users need to update databases in real time, or when a business process needs to ensure that duplicate records are not created, for example.

Another area of overlap is with thin-client solutions, such as those based on a Web browser. Recent browsers can work with XML documents on the Web, and developers have numerous options for creating forms that work with back-end databases. Microsoft’s .NET Framework includes technologies that will work well with both a "smart client" approach based on XDocs (such as WinForms that run on the local PC) and with the "thin-client" approach, such as server-based WebForms.

Resources

More information about XDocs is at www.microsoft.com/office/xdocs.

Microsoft’s broad strategy for office productivity software is described in "Information Worker Focus of New Client Plans" on page 26 of the Oct. 2002 Update.

Current technologies for connecting Office to Web services are covered in "Office Web Services Toolkit 2" on page 19 of the Sept. 2002 Update.

Use of .NET development tools for Web services development is described in the Feb. 2002 Research Report, "The .NET Development Platform."