Microsoft's flagship technology conference, commonly known as Tech·Ed, was held in Dallas in early June. Much has been written elsewhere about this event, but I would like to point out a couple of things I thought were quite significant, from an XML perspective.

Although XML and Web services are well utilized in most Microsoft technologies, a couple of highlights were: InfoPath, Microsoft's XML-based electronic forms technology, part of the next version of Office 2003; XML support in other Office products, particularly Excel and Word; BizTalk Server 2004, a.k.a. Jupiter, the first release of the unified e-business server offering; and SQL Server/XML support.

InfoPath (reviewed in our June issue [XML-J Vol. 4, issue 6]) was definitely a show-stealer. There were about six sessions held on InfoPath itself, and a number of others highlighted the tool as a key collaboration/Web services user interface tool, a.k.a. a smart client. I think Microsoft has made great progress related to the electronic forms creation user interface. What needs to be thought about are the various ways the forms can be filled/submitted. Currently an InfoPath client is required to submit a form; we need to start thinking about how this medium will work across enterprises, in mobile devices, etc.

XML support in Microsoft Word and Excel was the other major spotlight. The XML support in Office applications boils down to (1) the ability to store Office documents as XML documents, which typically have a schema defined by Microsoft; (2) the ability for Office documents to utilize external schemas, and to bind components of the documents to specific elements of a schema. Two applications come to mind: first, a proposal template that can utilize a proposal XML Schema and then have the nicely formatted Word document/template. At runtime a developer can then merge the dynamic XML from a back-end application using the XML Schema-enabled Word template, and generate the proposal on demand and deliver it to the customer. This would be a great asset for application scenarios such as salesforce automation, insurance quotes, etc.

With Excel things become a little more interesting. As a die-hard spreadsheet user, I have come to live with Excel as a very useful tool for ad hoc analysis of data, charting, calculations, pivot tables, etc. XML support for Excel means that all these analytical and reporting features can now be combined with enterprise data. A simplified explanation of the XML support is that Excel 2003 allows the user to map individual cells of the spreadsheet (A1, B2, etc.) with XML Schema elements through a drag-and-drop interface. So an XML-contained purchase order (you know, with Header and Lines), translates into a set of Excel cells containing the customer name and the various order items. This data can come from relational databases (with RDBMS-to-XML conversion utilities available - for instance, SQL Server provides what is known as SQLXML) or from back-end systems, through XML/Web services interfaces and/or wrappers. Excel now becomes a powerful reporting tool, not just for self-contained data, but for external data sources.

Then there were the BizTalk Server 2004 announcements. A first beta of the highly awaited product was made available to conference attendees. A highlight of the new release was the new "Orchestration Designer" interface (a tool that enables business analysts and developers to define and implement business processes). BizTalk Server 2000/2002 utilized a customized version of Visio as the orchestration designer. In BizTalk 2004, elements that make up business orchestrations are now part of the Visual Studio .NET 2003 interface. Another nice addition was the Business Rule Composer, which is geared toward abstracting, defining, and maintaining a common business rules repository. The rules can then be used as decision points and actions within an orchestration. Also, BizTalk 2004 now supports drag-and-drop import of XML Schemas and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) export functionality.

A key aspect of the show was the introduction of http://techedbloggers.net. This was an ad hoc community established to syndicate feedback about the show. The community consisted of speakers, attendees, staff, and even press, and ended up becoming a single point to collaborate on a central theme, the Tech·Ed conference. Community establishment at technology conferences seems like a natural fit. I won't be surprised if this blogging becomes a trend at future conferences. In fact, I think it makes sense for the conference organizers to build such a platform and provide it as a feature to the attendees.

Watch for XML-Journal's coverage of JavaOne 2003 in next month's issue.