The Information Bridge Framework Architecture

The Information Bridge Framework (IBF) provides a generic engine that hooks Office client applications to data in Web services. Developers create solutions by writing solution descriptions (called solution metadata) interpreted by the engine and supplying Smart Tags and Windows Forms for entering and viewing data. The architecture enables developers to create solutions for accessing Web services in Office with relatively little client-side code.

A typical transaction in an IBF solution for customer relationship management (CRM) might run as follows:

(1) An event occurs in the user interface of a client application, such as Word. For example, a Smart Tag recognizes an order number, or the user clicks on an XML-tagged customer name. The event is forwarded to the engine on the client.

(2) The engine looks up the solution metadata associated with the event and calls the Web services indicated in the metadata—in this case, a Web service front-end to a CRM system. To work with the built-in capabilities of the engine, Web services have to conform to specific conventions (for instance, they need to provide a specific interface for retrieving and storing data elements such as customer records); otherwise, the developer will have to write client-side code or an additional Web service “shim” to bridge the gap.