Office Web Components: Object Model and Terminology

Back in 2001 I picked up a copy of the MSDN News newspaper at some Microsoft event. Yes, you read it right: MSDN News and newspaper. The newspaper was quite small (8 sheets or so) and had quite a few very interesting articles. I even called up MSDN Magazine to find out how to subscribe to MSDN News, but—surprise!—they hadn’t heard of such a newspaper and had no clue about subscription.

By a lucky coincidence, my copy had a large diagram of Office XP Web Components, their object model and terminology. If you’ve ever dealt with Web Components (see Building Dazzling Charts with Office Web Components), this diagram is indispensable. They even posted this diagram on Microsoft’s web site as a large PDF!

Ever since I’ve tried to find this chart, but every link on the web pointing to it was long gone. Even Microsoft has no history of it (as an exercise for the readers, try to find MSDN News on the web. I found nothing.). You can imagine how happy I was to find it on my own hard drive while cleaning out junk. Below is a maxi-thumbnail on the said chart:

Download this diagram in large resolution (2440px by 1576px, 307K zip) and consider yourself lucky: it’s not lying around any more. ;)

As an aside: I don’t understand why Microsoft is being so secretive about Office Web Components. In static mode they are great. In the interactive mode, i.e. as ActiveX widgets, they are more powerful than anything I’ve seen out there. Yet, you can’t even find much decent coverage of their applications. Very strange.

I can't see anything for Word - I dont have fireworks either to open the document.

Is there any support for using Word?

Cheers
Gregor

I don't think there's anything in OWC for Word. These components deal mostly with all kinds of reporting.

The help files for OWC are found at:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Components\11\1033

If you are interested in doing anything MS Office Web Components, I'd strongly recommend "Programming Office Web Components" by Dave Stearns. Although this is an older book (in 2000), Dave is the original project manager of Office Web Components, and the material he presents is extemely valuable. OWC is alot more powerful than the "Save As Web Page" option in Excel.

OWC allows you to:
1) modify Web components through Javascript (i.e. change a chart type by changing a select box)

2) Fire Web Events events through Office Components through VBScript) (i.e submit a form with data to a webServer through VBScript)

3) change menu options (i.e. when you right click on a spreadsheet a custom menu appears where you can define your own functions in VBScript)

4) Have a chart update (refresh) automatically for real time charting.(i.e. real time stock quote charting)

Eric, thank you for the valuable tip!

Is there anything available in OWC to play around with Outlook

Do you have any sample that I can download to create server site bar chart using VB in ASP .net?

Thank you,

Yes, see this article. The download comes with both C# and VB.NET samples.

hi,
i am trying to get the category value in a stacked owc bar chart when the user clicks any bar in the chart. Would really appreciate any code examples that could point me in the right direction. Am using c# and owc11 in a windows form environment.

thanks

I'm afraid you're confusing the issue. The charts, as I described, are rendered as static images. Using them interactively, as ActiveX controls, is a whole different story.

I have downloaded an example from MS Site and it helped me a lot. I have succeeded in connecting to Views on a DB as well as Cubes in MS Analysis Server. I have one problem however. If a dimension in AS is created as a Parent-Child dimension, the particular entry in the field list of the OWC is displayed in a tree, really cool! How must I program a view to achieve the same result? (The table on which the view is based is a self referencing Hierarchical structure)

Thnx

I'm afraid this comment is off-topic and is better suited for a forum.

Hi Milan, geat articles (read them both), but just to make sure. If I have OWC11 on my webserver and nothing else, I can render excel but it depends on the client if Excel is opened (if office is installed). What will be showed if the client has no Excel on it's computer?

Do you understand my question?

I wish I have a better oportunity to learn and upgrade myself

want to use office component for drawing a map with longitude n latitude... i guess i can do it with system.drawing... however i want to give certain location... where if users clicks he can be shown some menu etc... i m totally lost.. read ur earlier articles for charts ..it was amazing...i need some samples for using office component in interative mode... i m using C#.net vs studio 2.0 and office 2003...

Actually i want build (chChartTypeColumnStacked) or Stacked Chart which have two categories which is Penang and Xiamen. Each categories will have 4 status which are pending, assigned, inProgress and closed.
But, the coding part i attached i onli manage produce the penang onli . i also out of idea liao. so, i hope u can help to check what is the problem about it and give me some sugggestion. i am using the office web component (OWC11) to plot the graph.

In the coding, the comment part is the actual code.
In the line 52 - 62 - is about retrieve the information about the pending status. In the for loop, i put the "getBuildingLocation" which located at the line 251.

In the line 64-80, it is about the assigned status.
In the line 83-99, it is about the InProgress status.
In the line 102-118, it is about the closed status.
in the line 119-248, it is the setting of the graph.

The major problem is if i uncomment the i=0 and i=i+1, in every statement, there will an error occur. but, if i comment it, i think it cannot loop one. and if-else statement also a problem, which i cannot differentiate the Penang and Xiamen one de. ..?

the sample picture is the one i currently code. i want produce another one which is called Xiamen.

So, hope u can give some advice on it.