Office 2003 XML

Xml

Word 2003 Document Automation with VBA, XML, XSLT, and Smart Documents (Wordware Applications Library)

Format: Paperback
Author: Scott Driza
ReleaseDate: June, 2005
Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc.
Rating:

It delivers on its promise!
This one certainly does! The back cover states that it sets out to explain how to:

- Automate documents with a minimum of programming by using Word's native functionality
- Use VBA to create document automation solutions
- Record macros, create automated templates, format and manipulate files using Word and build documents dynamically
- Create, edit and format XML documets
- Develop smart documents solutions to guide users through a variety of repetitive tasks
- Transform XML using WordprocessingML, XSLT, XPath, smart documents and web services technologies

Ok, to be fair I didn't find anything on web services explicitly but it still gets us over 99% of the way through delivering on its expectations. Quite often you see book titles that unfortunately do not match the subject content.

This book has hit a niche area for word users wanting to create smarter documents with no other book providing coverage of this subject matter as intimately or in a way as easy to follow as this book. It is perfect for people who routinely have to write legal contracts, functional specifications and general technical documentation as it allows you to fully leverage off Word's capabilities in letting you work smarter.

I did not own any other books by Wordware and this seemed to be a bit out there in their list of publications so I was initially a bit hesitant about buying this book. As it turns out I shouldn't have been! Scott Driza presents the subject matter well and in a very succint way - this book has just over 400 pages in which it manages to cover quite a lot of ground!

I bought this book primarily to concentrate on the XML, XSLT and Smart Documents features, but have found that I even picked up a trick or two in relation to VBA-based templates. For those who like using shortcut keys, Appendix A will be a God send as it has the most exhaustive list of Word commands and shortcut keys I have ever seen!

The book devotes approximately half of its pages to VBA and assumes no prior knowledge of VBA, XML, XSLT or Smart Documents. It doesn't cover all subject areas exhaustively but it gets you started and tells you where to get additional materials.

I would have liked to have seen a bit more detail on XML schemas although the the book does show you how to get Word to automatically generate an inferred schema based on XML mark-up. That is pretty much the only reason why I didn't give it a 5-star rating.

If you are an IT professional, engineer, lawyer, technical writer or any other type of knowledge worker; do yourself a favour - stop creating your documents the hard way and buy this book. It will more than pay for itself the first time you start applying the concepts, techniques and technologies it refers to.