09 February 2005

InfoPath + Amazon Web Service = wtf!?

UPDATE: The InfoPath team have affirmed that this is a bug and provided a general and specific work-around. Read about it here.

Wow. I'm getting into InfoPath these days and wanted to use the Amazon E-Commerce Service 4.0 to retreive some data. I've tried and reproduced this on two machines so far:

  1. Open InfoPath
  2. Design a form > New blank form
  3. Tools > Data Connections > Add
  4. Receive Data > Web Service > Paste URI http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/AWSECommerceService.wsdl
  5. Select an operation > ItemLookup > Next > CRASH!

Who's to blame? InfoPath or the Amazon WebService. Well, FrontPage consumes the service without violently terminating without giving any errormessages. Anyone else able to reproduce?

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Comments

# Thomas Tomiczek said:

Who is to blame?

Easy: InfoPath.

A Web-Servie is text. There is no excuse for this CRASHING an application. Even if you get rubbish out of the web-service, a normal error-message should be all that happens.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005 11:21 AM
# John Cartin said:

Yeah, I can reproduce this to the letter and I cannot find a reason for it.

Bad MS!

Wednesday, February 09, 2005 1:24 PM
# Dave Kingston said:

I can also reproduce this. I have a fresh install (2 days old and patched with everything available via office update at that same time).

Gotta be some infopath bug. Don't have any idea why it would necessitate crashing.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005 3:13 PM
# InfoPath Team said:

Sorry about that previous comment's automagically formated URL. Cleaned up URL for the InfoPath team blog entry:

http://blogs.msdn.com/infopath/archive/2005/02/11/371317.aspx

Friday, February 11, 2005 4:11 PM