Web Services Deliver to Office

Salesforce.com is the latest of several Web service providers to create an Office client for its Internet-based services. The announcement boosts Microsoft’s campaign to promote “smart client” solutions built on Office and to provide guidance for system architects designing such solutions. However, the experiences of Salesforce.com and other providers, such as LexisNexis, also illustrate limitations of the smart client architecture.

Office Smart Clients Alternative to Browsers

In Microsoft’s parlance, a smart client solution consists of client software that presents data to the user and enables data analysis and one or more Web services that store data and perform most solution-specific processing. The client and Web services exchange data in XML format over standard Web protocols such as Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP). In an Office-based smart client solution, the client code is integrated into an Office application such as Word, Excel, or Outlook.

Compared to browser-based “thin client” solutions, Microsoft believes Office-based smart client solutions can provide more familiar user interfaces, superior integration of Web services data with data from documents and other sources, and better support for formatting and analyzing data while disconnected from the Web services.