Variable Data Publishing with Word

[doug thomson]

Hello I am a programmer/analyst researching a possible switch from Planet
Press to a friendlier and cheaper solution for handling student mailouts from
the University I work for. I'm wondering about the ability to use Word 2007
along with our Oracle 9i database. Can someone please point me in the right
direction where I can find this information?

Thanks.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

What is "Planet Press"? (Is it a sofwtare package or a print service?

What sort of information are you looking for?

I probably can't give you the answers, but some questions you could usefully
ask:
a. Are you aiming to do bulk e-mails, printed mailouts, or what?
b. How many copies could you be talking about, and how often would you
produce them?
vc if you're producing hard copy, will you produce in-house or using a
bureau? How will you distrinute? Would you need to acquire new printing
capacity to do it in-house? What about costs?
c. have you tried any "dry runs" producing the kind of volumes you need to
produce (e.g. perhaps printing to the XPS printer in Office 2007 to avoid
paper waste, and so on?
d. are your layouts likely to be simple or complex, i.e. do you really need
a WP program such as Word or a layout program (such as Publisher), or both?
e. Have you tried connecting to Oracle 9i from Word 2007 (You may need to
install Oracle's ODBC driver or OLE DB provider, and set up an ODBC DSN or
OLE DB .odc for your database) , or you may be able to get by with
Microsoft's old Oracle 6 compatible driver/provider.

And so on...

Peter Jamieson