What's the InfoPath silver bullet?

[Sathyaish]

Before InfoPath, if you wanted to transport a UI over a network, you
probably did the following:

1. Designed a UI in a designer;
2. Did some of the designing by writing code as well;
3. Wrote some code to bind the UI to a data source. You even made it
configurable by looking up the location of the data source from a
config/ini file;
4. You saved the UI to a file.

The big difference was that the format you saved earlier was binary,
and most of the times proprietory. So, if you saved the UI into a VB 6
(.frm and .frx) Forms Object Engine, you'd transfer the .frm and .frx
over the network.

Your friend at the other end would recieve it and modify it to suit his
or her needs. The pre-requisite here: our friend needs to have Visual
Studio 6.0 IDE (with the Forms Object Designer and the MSVBVM60.dll
runtime and all that).

What has changed with Open Office File Formats? If you design a form in
InfoPath and share it accross a network, you are tranporting serialized
text.

The reciever, in this case, grabs the XML and still CAN ONLY USE IT IF
HE HAS INFOPATH/OFFICE 2003.

Can someone show me how today has changed from yesterday? What has
InfoPath solved?

 

[Greg Collins [InfoPath MVP]]

Actually, your friend only needs a text editor to open the XML file, make any changes they want and send it back to you.

If they want to open it in the form it was created in, then yes, they will need not only InfoPath installed on their machine, but a copy of the form template available to them as well.

--
Greg Collins [InfoPath MVP]
Visit http://www.InfoPathDev.com


Before InfoPath, if you wanted to transport a UI over a network, you
probably did the following:

1. Designed a UI in a designer;
2. Did some of the designing by writing code as well;
3. Wrote some code to bind the UI to a data source. You even made it
configurable by looking up the location of the data source from a
config/ini file;
4. You saved the UI to a file.

The big difference was that the format you saved earlier was binary,
and most of the times proprietory. So, if you saved the UI into a VB 6
(.frm and .frx) Forms Object Engine, you'd transfer the .frm and .frx
over the network.

Your friend at the other end would recieve it and modify it to suit his
or her needs. The pre-requisite here: our friend needs to have Visual
Studio 6.0 IDE (with the Forms Object Designer and the MSVBVM60.dll
runtime and all that).

What has changed with Open Office File Formats? If you design a form in
InfoPath and share it accross a network, you are tranporting serialized
text.

The reciever, in this case, grabs the XML and still CAN ONLY USE IT IF
HE HAS INFOPATH/OFFICE 2003.

Can someone show me how today has changed from yesterday? What has
InfoPath solved?