It was long wating Microsoft Office Server side programming now come true.Since the data is now separate from the view, it is possible to manipulate the data in a document without starting Office using the ServerDocument class. This is different than the current model, where in order for code to manipulate the contents of the document, you have to have Word or Excel running. Having to run Word or Excel blocks a common solution requirement, that is, creating Office documents from an ASP.NET application. Office applications are intended for use in client environments; they are not designed to be run on a server.

You can start the Visual Studio Tools for Office, Version 2005 Beta 1 runtime on a server without running Word or Excel. You can manipulate the data island in a document from any server-side code. When the user opens the associated Office document the view synchronizes to the data island by using data binding, and the user is presented with the updated data.

In this model, you do not need Word and Excel to write to the data on the server, only to view it on the client. You do not even need Word and Excel installed on the server. This provides improved scalability and the ability to perform fast batch processing of documents containing data islands on the server.

Your Office document functions as a repository for data, because programmatic access to the data embedded in the document is enabled. Code on the server (for example, in an ASP.NET page) can customize the data in the document and serve up the customized document. When the user opens the document, data binding code in the assembly binds the customized data into the view.

For more ...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2003_ta/html/VBAConvert.asp

Suresh Behera