App using OWC 2003 Deployment - How to ?

[Nick Palmer]

I have an ASP.NET app that uses the OWC components, specifically, the Excel
grid, and everything works fine on my development box. But when I try and
move it to a production system, I run into problems. I've installed the OWC
2003 download (owc11.exe) on the system, but that doesn't seem to solve my
problem. Do I have to actually install a copy of Office 2003 on this server
? I've tried to find the OWC 2003 PIA's as seperate files like they had for
XP, but I can't seem to find them either on the CD or on the microsoft.com
site. Do these PIA's exist for 2003, and if so where can I find them ?

Thanks,
Nick

 

[Ronny Ong]

When you say "Excel grid" it implies to me that you are using the
Spreadsheet component as client-side UI. In other words, you are not
instantiating OWC on the server. Therefore, it is irrelevant whether OWC is
installed on the server. You would need to deploy OWC to the client
machines.

Also, unless your application includes managed code on both the server side
(ASP .NET) as well as client (meaning .NET assemblies in the form of DLL
and/or EXE files), PIAs would be irrelevant to your situation because PIAs
are only used for managed code to interop with COM interfaces. But just to
answer your question: PIAs for Office 2003 are included with Office 2003
itself and are part of the default "Typical" install. (Technically, they are
installed as "advertised" but the default will also cache the MSI and CAB
files needed to resolve and implement the advertised CLSIDs automatically
upon first use.)

You didn't say much about your app, so I am having to guess about your
scenario. It is certainly possible for an app to instantiate OWC in
server-side code. It is also possible for apps to use OWC both client-side
and server-side. You need to figure out where your particular app design is
instantiating OWC.

OWC11 does not require Office 2003 to be installed, but it operates in
Reduced Functionality Mode if you do not have Office 2003 installed. The
exact limitations of Reduced Functionality Mode vary from component to
component, but you can generally think of it as a "read-only" mode. It's
hard to tell whether you are having a problem with Reduced Functionality
Mode or some other problem because you never really said what kind of
problems you are having. Is there some sort of error message? Does the
browser crash? Does smoke come out of the keyboard? A little more info would
make it easier for someone to help.

 

[Josh Sale]

Ronny,

Just to add a little bit of contex to Nick's posting:

- The app uses the OWC11 grid on BOTH the client and the server.
- The server side is managed code (ASP.Net/VB.Net) and that is where Nick is
having the PIA problem.
- I'm not sure what error message he's getting.
- We (think) we understand the OWC11 licensing rules.

I think the question should be "Is it possible for managed code running on
the server to instantiate OWC11 spreadsheet objects without having Office
2003 installed on the server? If so, how do you go about getting the PIAs?"

Thanks for your help.

josh

 

[Ronny Ong]

I think the question should be "Is it possible for managed code running on
the server to instantiate OWC11 spreadsheet objects without having Office
2003 installed on the server? If so, how do you go about getting the
PIAs?"

Is it possible: yes. Is it supported: no.

Since OWC uses COM, managed code needs interop assemblies to instantiate
OWC. The only "supported" interop assemblies for OWC are the official ones
from Microsoft, and those are not available except by installing a licensed
copy of Office 2003. It might seem unfair that the licensing and
availability of PIAs are not aligned with the licensing and availability of
OWC, but that's the way it is.

On the other hand, the PIAs are 99% identical to the interop assemblies you
can generate yourself (either with VS .NET or tlbimp from the Framework
SDK). The P in PIA simply means that they have been hand-tuned to resolve
certain issues and then digitally signed by Microsoft.

So if you really want to avoid installing Office on your server, you can
generate your own interop assemblies and see if they work well enough.
Depending on the exact OWC features your app is using, it may not run into
any issues which are addressed by the PIAs.

Presumably, Nick's development machine already has a copy of Office 2003
installed (and thus the PIAs were installed into the GAC). To generate your
own interop assemblies, you will have to do it on a different machine, else
Nick will need to uninstall Office 2003 temporarily.

 

[Amy]

Nick, If you are using the owc server side, then your server will need to have a license for one of the office 2003 products. In order to get the license on your server, you will need to install one of the products onto the server. Although not a desirable solution - I had called Microsoft about this a year ago, and they indicated that this was the only option to get the license registered on the server. Hope that helps..

 

[Josh Sale]

Thanks Ronny and Amy. We'll do what we gotta do. I think one of the points
of confusion for us was that OWC10 PIA's were available as a seperate
download.

josh