Customer Reviews

Developing Solutions with Microsoft InfoPath(TM) (Pro-Developer)

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With all due respect to my esteemed fellow InfoPath programmer, this is the only book worth owning if you have to code complex projects in InfoPath VBScript or JavaScript. InfoPath is supposed to be the world's most cutting edge XML tool. With it's strong hooks to Web Services, it's supposed to be a thin-client tool for th 21st century. But how do you code connections to a Web Service? How do you auto populate a form using information queried from a web service? How do you query a web service from code in the first place? How do you access a UDDI catalog from code? How do you fill a list box with a number of web service descriptions to let the user choose which one is the correct service? How do you code a master-detail one-to-many form in VBScript or JScript?

This is the only book which shows you how to code this very common, typical, highly characteristic programming problems.

I understand that it's probably not that easy to write a book for something like InfoPath. It's a powerful product that has tons of ins and outs; however, I expected much more for my money. Some of the examples in the book get shortchanged on explanation, and the reader is often left to fill in the gaps. In addition to that, some chapters, like chapter 10 don't even have functioning code. For instance, see if you can spot the error with this line of critical code:

Dim sContact As String = String.Format("//Roles/Approvers/{0}[@alias=" & Quote & "{1}" & Quote & "]", sAlias)

Perhaps it's just me but it seems that the string.format needs to be passed two arguments rather than one. This is in a project that attempts to implement workflow.

This also brings to mind how the DEVELOPMENT part of the book is handled. It's fairly standard in development books to start out with simple examples and build iteratively in complexity as you go. Not with this book, you get little bits and pieces of managed code and then get a BUNCH of code in Chapter 10. Not sure why the authors decided on this style. Perhaps they were trying to show how far you can go with declarative programming.

As far as InfoPath goes, I am not sure how the standard everyday user of Office products is supposed to get excited here. The minute you need to do something even moderately standard, like having multiple sign-offs on a document, you are forced to code. And once you are forced to code you had better understand the DOM, XML, XPath, etc. Not sure what Microsoft was thinking.


Not sure that this book is much help.

If you want to get more indepth with InfoPath, this is the book for you. It covers advanced topics to launch you into designing more powerful digital forms.

I especially enjoying the topics on workflow, sharepoint and Web service integration.

Just two comments:
1) This books fails to convince me that InfoPath is a necessary product at all. Looks like more bloatware from Microsoft. It is nothing more that a weak scripting technology. Microsoft should have used more time in better development for Access, or Excel, instead of creating some new package. But I know some people at MS, and I know that a new product there means another position for Product Unit Managers, Development Managers, Test Managers, etc. So, that is probably the only reason they needed to add yet another product to the already bloated Office.

2) It looks like the book authors understand InfoPath, but then they don't understand anything else: BizTalk, Web Services, etc. The book is very, very, very weak when it comes down to software architecture and design. And it comes short in many other issues that affect any other piece of software built nowadays: globalization, customization, security, etc.

A better use of your time and money is probably not to use InfoPath at all in your projects. Stick to SmartClient technology, which is well explained is several paper in MSDN.