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Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office (VSTO) is one of many environments for Office-based "smart client" solutions. Shown here are some prominent platforms and development environments for Office-based clients that access corporate application data, along with our best guess on the future prospects for applications built on each platform. In the opinion of Directions, platforms that have broad support throughout Microsoft and that support client applications which are independent of Office's current COM APIs (which will get limited future investment from Microsoft) will offer the longest life for applications.
However, not all Office client platforms have the same capabilities. For example, the Office Research task pane only supports retrieving data, and only from Web services that have a specific API. Clients created with InfoPath, the Information Bridge Framework (IBF), Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and VSTO can retrieve and update data from a broader range of sources. Platforms also differ on which client products they require—for example, only VBA works on versions of Office prior to Office 2003.
Microsoft's Web site provides additional technical guidelines for matching the platform to a particular Office development task.
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Client Platform
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Run-time Engine
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Client Products
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Programming Languages
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Development Environment
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Long-Term Application Viability
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| InfoPath Scripting |
Script |
InfoPath 2003 |
VBScript, JScript |
InfoPath |
Low. Based on unmanaged scripting engines (superseded by .NET Framework), clients depend on Office COM APIs. |
| Information Bridge Framework (IBF) |
IBF Runtime |
Word, Excel, Outlook, and InfoPath 2003 |
IBF Metadata plus Visual C# or VB.NET |
Visual Studio and IBF designer |
Medium. Limited support for engine at Microsoft (outside the Information Worker unit), but clients only partially depend on Office COM APIs. |
| Office Research Task Pane |
None |
Office 2003 |
Research Pane Metadata |
None |
High. Clients only support data retrieval, but the Research task pane requires little developer support from Microsoft, and applications that use it do not depend on Office COM APIs. |
| Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) |
VBA |
Office 97 and later |
VBA |
VBA |
Low. Derived from Visual Basic 6.0 (superseded by .NET Framework and VB.NET), clients depend on Office COM APIs. |
| Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2003 |
.NET Framework |
Word, Excel 2003; InfoPath 2003 SP1 or later |
Visual C#, VB.NET |
VSTO 2003 |
Medium. Based on strategic run-time engine and tools, with high support throughout Microsoft, but clients depend on Office COM APIs. |
| Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2005 |
.NET Framework and VSTO runtime |
Word, Excel 2003; InfoPath 2003 SP1 or later |
Visual C#, VB.NET |
VSTO 2005 (currently in beta test) |
High. Support throughout Microsoft. For Word and Excel, VSTO 2005 client engine hides COM APIs in favor of .NET APIs that are forward-compatible to Office 12. |
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