RE: [xml-dev] InfoPath, OpenOffice, XForms (Was: Low-end Office 1 1 won't do user schemas)

Personal opinion...

Andrew Watt:

>And I think they also have in mind a much more nuanced marketing approach.

Their approach is as nuanced as the top notch in a food chain.

>InfoPath as a dynamic XML-enabled forms frontend for a whole raft of
business-
>critical backend information handling processes based on XML Web Services.

I hope their strategy has more legs than just Web Services. Surprisingly few
are using WS technology beyond XML-over-http for "enterprise" services.

>Thus when OpenOffice fully catches up MS will have moved the game on to a
new
>target. :) ... InfoPath.

I often wonder what the OO folks have planned. It would be pretty
straightforward
to make a nice GUI InfoPath-like application minus the vendor lock-in part.

>So InfoPath will be sold as a quantum leap above "plain old" Office

Well, a "quantum leap" is the physically smallest change possible, right?
;-)

Uche is right: Any investment made into deploying native InfoPath leads
to more lock-in. Customers hate that. It will be interesting to
watch how the market plays out; just how much customers are willing to
tolerate lock-in.

>Second, it looks very much as if InfoPath and XForms will be fighting out a
>battle for a very important new space - the XML forms-derived data space.

Not much of a "battle" in the XForms 1.0 / InfoPath 2003 time frame.
see http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3001

>XML-based forms looks to be a space to watch very closely.

Agreed.

.micah

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Check out "XForms Essentials", to be published by O'Reilly in 2003. Full
review text at http://dubinko.info/writing/xforms/