Customer Reviews

Pro InfoPath 2007 (Expert's Voice)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had spent a week "getting up to speed" on InfoPath using the usual sources of information: MSDN and hit or miss Google searches and had ended embarrassingly uninformed about the product.

I have been developing software for 15 years and have never run across a development environment as poorly document as public domain body of work for InfoPath. The documentation that I had uncovered was for the most part blatant Microsoft marketing hype. There is a lot of information about the amazing capabilities of InfoPath but very little about actually utilizing them. The Ministry of Public Education in Redmond had done its job well.

I was approaching desperation when I ordered Janus's book. I sprung for the next day delivery and as promised, it was on my doorstep the following day. As it happened that had been a very long and frustrating day of wresting the subject of the book. In spite of my mental fatigue I eagerly opened the cardboard packaging. My expectations were low. Competent technical writing seems to have become a lost art. I was hoping for a few good tips to mitigate my frustration but what the book delivered was actually marvelously lucid writing and answers to the FAQ's that had been swimming around my in my head for the last week.

I read the book at one sitting and saw the brick wall that I had been butting up against clearly and methodically dismantled. In particular, complexity of InfoPath's security model was spelled out clearly and concisely.

I have long devoted precious shelf space to the books that shipped with Borland Object Oriented Pascal. I haven't used that language in many years but I considered the documents to be the last existing example of a good documentation package. I simply can't bear to get rid of it. I will now have to make space next to it for the Janus book.

There are all too many technical books that are heavy on theory and light on "how to", or start out in an introductory fashion and then suddenly venture into highly technical territory without including the necessary background information needed to understand the content.

In "Pro InfoPath 2007", Philo Janus neatly avoids these pitfalls. Since he's writing about a product with whom most readers may not be familiar, he first answers the vital question, "What IS InfoPath?" with a comprehensive introduction to the product. Then Janus carefully outlines the capabilities of InfoPath and walks the reader through the steps necessary to create InfoPath forms in all kinds of environments; how to meet business needs in a myriad of situations; and most importantly, includes possible issues and limitations that one might encounter when using InfoPath and provides the necessary workarounds.

My own company has InfoPath installed but despite an enterprise-wide need for exactly what InfoPath does, is resistant to its use because of a fundamental lack of understanding of the software and how to best deploy it. A read of this book would convince them that they have a good product sitting on the shelf that would meet their needs and interface neatly with Sharepoint and other applications already in use.

Thumbs up to Philo Janus for a job well done.

If you are doign anything with InfoPath 2007 then get this book!!! This book is an easy and informative read. The author even tries to make it his goal that this can be a weekend read. Not like your typical mind numbing rehash of the tech manuals. Philo not only describes what InfoPath 2007 is but gives real example that you can take into work.

This book is just great. Good coverage in around 300 pages. I totally dislike huge development books that just harp around. This book covers all the necessary topics with examples... A++++++++++++++++ for Philo Janus

This tiny book, in comparison with other technical manuals, is a fantastic way to get up to speed with InfoPath in a very short time. I'd never had the opportunity to work with InfoPath before, until my company decided to implement MOSS 2007 with InfoPath Forms services. I bought this book and in a few short days we were churning out InfoPath business solutions.
This book is an easy weekend read and then you are ready to go!

This is a very good book on using InfoPath 2007. There aren't too many books out there on the application. I started out using one of Microsoft's books (Designing Forms for Microsoft Office InfoPath and Forms Services 2007 (Microsoft .NET Development Series)) but it was boring and did not have examples to walk through to re-enforce the information. What I really liked about this book is it gives an overview of the topic but then it backs the information up with exercises for you, the reader to complete. The only complaint I have is on one of the exercises I could not complete because it required a web service and the web service the book uses is not in service. I highly recommend this book over the Microsoft book. This book is for the power user and also for the developer. For the developer there are exercises developing using the InfoPath object model and creating workflows using Visual Studio. For the power user there are exercises creating form templates, publishing to various places (SharePoint, shared network, email, etc.) and creating workflows using SharePoint Designer.

I was hoping for a book that I could use as a reference guide for troubleshooting; this book is more of a how-to guide. Not a bad book for that; just not where I was going with it.

As another poster has pointed out, if you're in a VS 2008 environment this book falls apart. This is most apparent in the workflow chapter, which is a shame, because this is the area the product can really come alive. That said, it's a book for InfoPath, not InfoPath + WF + Sharepoint, so you can just about let him off.

When I first was introduced to InfoPath I recognized the power of the tool but finding good information was painful at best. I searched Microsoft's online information and that experience was painful at best. I looked into the book Designing Forms for Microsoft Office InfoPath and Forms Services 2007 from Addison Wesley. This seemed to be way too in depth to be of much use in getting up and running without investing considerable time before being able to get anything done. This book, Pro InfoPath 2007, is a great book to get up and started quickly, while still providing the full breadth of the tool's capabilities.

The first chapter provides a conceptual overview of what InfoPath is, what need it was designed to fill and how it strives to fill that need. The second chapter walks the reader through the basics of the interface. After having gone through it one will feel comfortable with what the various components offered to the developer do, how to access the functionality, etc. The next chapter describes the various concepts in use by the tool, such as the difference between forms and templates that is not immediately obvious to the newcomer however obvious this distinction may appear conceptually. This chapter goes through the available controls to add to forms, how to connect them to a data source, and finally how to publish the form/template to be available to users.

From there the book delves into various functionality that makes the technology truly useful across a broad range of uses, including accessing additional sources of data for such things as lookup data, for example, views and publishing options. What stood out for me along these lines was SharePoint integration. Finally the book gets into some advanced topics, including coding of forms. What I found particularly useful was how to understand the manifest and manipulate for various purposes. While the treatment may have not been particularly in depth, at least it provided me with the hook I needed to get started, which is usually enough for me.

The book overall is well and understandably written. It is not meant to be particularly in depth, however in parts I wish the author had explained some things better. I absolutely recommend this book as an introduction to the tool and a handy reference to keep close by.

The first form I helped with was accomplished with the "help" that comes on the msdn site. This book helped me get a clear understanding of the options for creating browser forms vs non-browser forms and the tools that are not available in browser forms - this will help a lot when it comes to designing a form that is sent via email now, but that I may want to be browser based later and still work. The deployment options where clearly stated and I have a better high-level view of the product and how to fit it into our architecture.