Posts Version 1.0 of docs for Office that enable interaction with third-party programs
June 30, 2008 (IDG News Service) Microsoft Corp. today unveiled projects to improve data portability between Office 2007 and other document file formats, including the design of a new translator for exchanging OOXML (Office Open XML) and HTML documents.
The company also posted the 1.0 version of technical documentation for protocols in Office and other software that enable those applications to interact with third-party programs.
The moves are part of an interoperability initiative that Microsoft launched in February under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union and competition from Linux and open-source software.
Microsoft also outlined some efforts it has been making to work in the community to help third parties develop interoperable technologies and promote data portability between its products and others, notably between its controversial OOXML file format and other formats for exchanging documents.
For example, the company is working on a new translator to read from documents in the OpenXML file format to HTML. The company has posted information about the project on its CodePlex site.
OOXML is the XML-based document format in Office 2007. The ISO standards group recently approved it as an international standard in a vote that is still being contested by some countries that took part in the decision.
Microsoft has said it will support a rival file format and ISO standard, ODF (OpenDocument Format), in Office 2007 in a service pack to be released early next year. It has slated support for OOXML in Office for the next version of Office, code-named Office 14, but no official release date has been set for that product. Many expect it will also be released next year, however.
In another data-portability effort, Microsoft is working with Beihang University in Beijing to develop translators between Uniform Office Format (UOF), an open standard in China for office documents, and Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint so users have more options to open and save UOF documents in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2003.
Also on CodePlex is information about a project to develop PowerTools PowerShell commands for OpenXML to enable IT managers to perform document management tasks. PowerShell is a command-line shell- and task-based scripting technology for Windows Server that provides control and automation of systems administration tasks.
As part of its efforts to post information about connection protocols for its software, Microsoft also posted online Version 1.0 of technology documentation for protocols built into Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Nearly 5,000 pages of new technical documentation for the Office binary file formats — doc, .xls, .xlsb and .ppt — for Word, Excel and PowerPoint also went up online.
Microsoft posted a preview of some of the documentation in April to receive feedback from the community. Today’s documents are the company’s final version of that documentation.
Microsoft has limped toward a more open development and data-exchange policy for some time. However, repeated fines from the EU for not complying with an antitrust settlement and increased competitive pressure from open-source software and Linux pressured the company to launch its formal interoperability and expansive technical documentation efforts.
by :By Elizabeth Montalbano
We’re excited to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company.
Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research.
More importantly, Powerset brings to Live Search a set of talented engineers and computational linguists in downtown San Francisco. This is a great team with a wide range of experience from other search engines and research organizations like PARC (formerly Xerox PARC).
We’re buying Powerset first and foremost because we’re impressed with the people there. Powerset CTO and cofounder Barney Pell is a visionary and incredible evangelist. When he introduced our senior engineers to some of the most senior people at Powerset — Search engineers and computational linguists like Tim Converse, Chad Walters, Scott Prevost, Lorenzo Thione, and Ron Kaplan — we came away impressed by their smarts, their experience, their passion for search, and a shared vision.
That shared vision is to take Search to the next level by adding understanding of the intent and meaning behind the words in searches and webpages.
We know today that roughly a third of searches don’t get answered on the first search and first click. Usually searchers find the information they want eventually, but that often requires multiple searches or clicks on multiple search results. Two specific problems are the most common reasons for this:
- Differences in phrasing or context between a user’s search and the way the same information is expressed on webpages. Search engines don’t understand today that “shrub” and “tree” are similar concepts. We don’t understand that “cancer” sometimes refers to a disease and sometimes refers to a horoscope and when a query or a webpage refers to which.
- Lack of clarity in the descriptions for each webpage in the search results. Sometimes a result looks relevant from its short description on the results page but turns out to be not so relevant when you visit the actual page. As a result, searchers frequently click results and then rapidly click back when they realize they aren’t what they’re looking for.
These problems exist because search engines today primarily match words in a search to words on a webpage. We can solve these problems by working to understand the intent behind each search and the concepts and meaning embedded in a webpage. Doing so, we can innovate in the quality of the search results, in the flexibility with which searchers can phrase their queries, and in the search user experience. We will use knowledge extracted from webpages to improve the result descriptions and provide new tools to help customers search better.
Working with our existing Search team and other Microsoft teams that focus on natural language, Powerset will help us address all of those problems and opportunities.
We’re looking to add even more talented engineers to the San Francisco team to accelerate our shared progress. If you’re interested in joining the team, drop us a line.
We’ll have more to say about the things we’re doing in understanding searches and webpages through natural language technology in the coming months. In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Powerset to Microsoft!
Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President, Search, Portal, and Advertising
Q&A: Cliff Lloyd, lead program manager in the Microsoft Education Products Group, discusses how the new SharePoint Learning Kit Add-On Pack provides tools for more effective classroom planning and learner assessment
REDMOND, Wash., July 1, 2008 –In January 2007 Microsoft released the SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK), a set of education-focused software tools available at no charge in binary and source code form on CodePlex.com. Using the SLK, independent software vendors (ISVs) can build solutions that make it easier for educators to manage assignments and free up time for classroom activities and one-on-one interaction with learners. Now Microsoft has released the SLK Add-On Pack, another set of development tools that will further assist educators with curriculum development and learner assessment.
PressPass spoke with Cliff Lloyd, a lead program manager in the Microsoft Education Products Group, about how educational institutions can benefit from the SLK and SLK Add-On Pack.
PressPass: I understand you’re updating the SharePoint Learning Kit. Can you elaborate on the updates and who stands to benefit?
Lloyd: When we consider the job of an educator, what comes to mind for most of us is what happens within the classroom: the daily interaction with learners as educators work to instill critical knowledge and skills. But the job of an educator involves so much more. Educators today have a full workload of activities that happen outside the classroom: from attending institution meetings and leading extracurricular activities to preparing lesson plans and grading projects and papers. What happens in the classroom is actually the culmination of several hours spent developing course curriculum and assignments. And after the semester or quarter ends, the task begins of assessing the performance of every learner and assigning them a final grade.
At Microsoft we have seen productivity and collaboration software have a tremendous impact on business, government and public services, but only scratch the surface when it comes to benefitting education. If we provide educators with the appropriate tools and expertise, we can reduce paperwork and administrative overhead, give them the insight and intelligence they need to optimize — and personalize — their teaching, and free up their time to focus on what they do best: engaging and exciting their learners.
With this in mind, we created a set of education-centric developer tools based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and known as the SharePoint Learning Kit. With the SLK, developers and solution providers can build solutions that enable educators to work more efficiently and easily create classroom assignments, share those assignments with their colleagues and manage the workflow of those assignments as they’re completed by learners.
As an extension of the SLK, the SharePoint Learning Kit Add-on Pack introduces a planning component to help educators at the beginning of an academic period develop curriculum and lesson plans that map to course objectives.
The Add-On Pack also provides grade book functionality that provides real-time learner tracking across a semester, culminating in a computed final score. Educators can grade and monitor the status of digital assessments and activities, as well as record scores for non-digital assessments, such as a project from a pottery class or the learner’s clarinet performance in music class.
We also structured the Add-On Pack so the user interface is separate from the business logic. This means Microsoft partners have greater freedom to customize their solutions to address an institution’s specific needs. For example, they can build a solution that functions seamlessly with third-party database products, or they could rewrite the user interface to integrate an institution’s grade book application.
PressPass: Are institutions really interested in all this functionality?
Lloyd: What we’re hearing from educators and institutions is that they need help automating the mundane, repetitious, time-consuming tasks that take them away from high-quality classroom instruction – things like planning, preparation and homework grading. Institutions are already investing in three key areas of technology to meet these needs: document management solutions for recording, data retention and compliance; intranet/portal solutions for communications, collaboration and the delivery of audience-targeted news and information; and course management systems to deal with processes such as course planning and preparation, course delivery and distance education.
A number of educational institutions in the United States approached us through our higher education consortia with a list of requests to address these areas. After further discussion with a representative body of institutions, we realized that most of their needs were already met through Microsoft Office, SharePoint Server and the SLK, but that their needs for semester-based grading and a system for reusable course curriculum were still unmet.
It was with that feedback in mind that we developed the SLK Add-On Pack. Our goal in doing so is to help our partners provide robust solutions that give back educators some of their precious time, so they can engage in more high-quality teaching activities.
PressPass: This sounds like a rather comprehensive solution; can institutions really afford it?
Lloyd: The SLK and the Add-On Pack are available at no charge, so they’re very affordable and, importantly, they provide learning institutions with a platform that’s flexible to meet their long-term needs. Flexibility is an essential characteristic for an institution looking for a solution that meets their needs and complies with government requirements.
Institutions can work with systems integrators and solution providers to build a modest solution that is customized to meet their short-term needs and provides the platform for a long-term investment. So SharePoint Server — coupled with the SLK and Add-On Pack — is a good fit, particularly in an environment where institutions like to start small and build from there.
PressPass: How can institutions take advantage of the SLK and Add-On Pack?
Lloyd: It’s interesting that, at least in the United States, a large number of higher-education institutions are already licensed to use SharePoint – roughly 80 percent at last count. So, from a licensing perspective, many institutions are already able to take advantage of the benefits of the SLK and Add-On Pack.
In addition, Microsoft has approximately 25,000 education partners worldwide that have the breadth and depth of knowledge to build a long-term learning solution on SharePoint. They can play a critical role for any institution by helping customize and build such a solution.
PressPass: Why has Microsoft created these technologies?
Lloyd: Technology has long since transformed how we live and work in many places around the world, but it has not yet revolutionized how we learn. Through technologies like the SLK and Add-On Pack, we can help fulfill educators’ demand for relief from the increasing administrative, non-teaching overheads they face, while allowing them to focus more time on helping learners learn. It also provides a foundation for making them more effective and extends their reach beyond the classroom.
If you think about that vision globally, you can imagine institutions in the United States interacting and sharing curriculum and courses digitally with institutions in other regions of the country or other countries altogether. Ultimately, through technology, Microsoft believes we can help extend the reach of educators, tools and content in affordable and scalable ways so education is available to everyone, whenever and wherever they want to learn.
Collaboration to extend Micro Focus’ development and modernization solutions on the Microsoft platform.
REDMOND, Wash., and NEWBURY, England — July 2, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. and Micro Focus® International plc today announced a strategic relationship to provide customers with advanced levels of integration and utilization of the Windows platform and the Microsoft toolset. Customers recognize the value of their existing COBOL-based applications and are looking to make them relevant to today’s architectures as part of their IT modernization initiatives. This strategic relationship will broaden the options available to these customers and allow them to accelerate their modernization strategies.
Micro Focus will further extend its Windows-based technology portfolio, including its Net Express, SOA Express and Enterprise Server products, to provide customers with managed-code, 64-bit solutions that will take advantage of the full power of the Microsoft .NET Framework, SQL Server, Team Foundation Server, BizTalk Server and System Center Operations Manager. By working together, Microsoft and Micro Focus can deliver a world-class development, testing and deployment solution, enabling rapid, low-risk, high-return options for their customers’ business-critical COBOL applications.
“For over two decades Micro Focus has been providing customers with choices for their business-critical applications, enabling them to recognize and extend the high value of their core IT assets,” said Stephen Kelly, CEO at Micro Focus. “At present, business leaders increasingly understand the logic in preserving and developing effective existing IT systems within their organizations. Our strategic collaboration responds to this corporate demand and demonstrates that Micro Focus and Microsoft are committed to help them modernize applications and to extend their business to where they want it to be.”
The ability to leverage new technologies and services in a changing business environment is a fundamental building block of a successful organization. By employing modern tooling and practices, cross-functional and cross-platform teams can work together with maximum effectiveness and efficiency. Together, Micro Focus and Microsoft will rapidly help businesses improve agility, reduce time to market, lower costs, and leverage the reliability, availability and scalability of high-performance platforms.
“By working with Micro Focus we are improving the value attained by mainframe customers choosing to go with the Windows platform for their modernization strategy, and improving the ROI helping them reduce the costs of their deployment efforts,” said Bill Hilf, general manager for Windows Server marketing at Microsoft. “Our relationship with Micro Focus demonstrates that both companies are committed to developing world-class application modernization solutions for enterprise customers.”
Those wanting to learn more about this collaboration should visit Micro Focus at booth No. 1001 at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, July 7–10, 2008, at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.
About Micro Focus
Micro Focus, (LSE: MCRO.L), a member of the FTSE 250, provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization and Management software enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. For additional information, visit www.MicroFocus.com.
Actions enhance opportunities for developers to work with Microsoft’s high-volume products.
REDMOND, Wash. — June 30, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced several new actions that deliver upon the commitments set in its Interoperability Principles to increase the openness of its products, drive greater interoperability, and provide increased opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.
Highlights of the actions announced today include: posting Version 1.0 releases of technical documentation for Microsoft protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007; posting nearly 5,000 pages of new technical documentation for the Microsoft Office binary file formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (.doc, .xls, .xlsb and .ppt); and making significant strides in the company’s efforts to foster more open engagement with other members of the IT community.
“Today’s actions represent Microsoft’s continued fulfillment of the commitments it made in its Interoperability Principles,” said Craig Shank, general manager of Interoperability at Microsoft. “Microsoft’s cumulative posting of approximately 50,000 pages of technical documentation on MSDN provides consistent, open access for all developers, which enhances the ease and opportunities for working with Microsoft’s high-volume products. Moreover, our work with partners, competitors and customers to engage in the technical nuts-and-bolts of real-world interoperability provides great ongoing opportunities for collaboration to address the challenges of today’s diverse IT environment.”
Ensuring Open Connections
As part of its commitment to ensure open connections to its products, Microsoft has posted on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216514.aspx) Version 1.0 releases of technical documentation for Microsoft protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Microsoft posted preliminary versions of this protocol documentation in April of this year, solicited input from the community, and factored this input into the Version 1.0 releases posted today.
As a result of the documentation, developers working with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 protocols will have additional resources to develop products that work with Microsoft Office 2007 client applications. In addition, developers working with Exchange Server 2007 protocols will have additional resources to build applications that directly communicate and store information related to e-mail, calendar, contacts, voice mail and task tracking with either Exchange Server 2007 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. This documentation provides comprehensive information about how these Microsoft products interact with other Microsoft products, which will assist developers creating new products and improving existing solutions.
“The protocol documentation has been very straightforward and has really enabled our developers to get up to speed on what they are looking at and implement the solutions in the Unified Access Control products as quickly as possible,” said Rich Campagna, senior product manager, Service Layer Technologies, Juniper Networks Inc.
In addition to posting this documentation, Microsoft also published a list indicating which of the published protocols built into the following products are covered by Microsoft patents or patent applications: Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), and Microsoft Windows Server 2008. In addition, Microsoft published the reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms and low pricing available to those who choose to take a license to the patents covering the protocols in these products that are used to communicate with other Microsoft products. This information is easily accessible at http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/intellectualproperty/protocols/default.mspx.
It is important to note that open source developers, whether commercial or non-commercial, will not need a patent license for the development of implementations of these protocols or for the non-commercial distribution of these implementations, according to Microsoft’s Patent Pledge for Open Source Developers.
Promoting Data Portability
Delivering on its interoperability principle of promoting data portability, the company posted on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216514.aspx) nearly 5,000 pages of new technical documentation for the Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .xlsb and .ppt). Access to this technical documentation, in addition to documentation provided earlier this year, will make it easier for developers to enable applications to read and write files in these binary file formats, thus enhancing the ease of moving data from one application to another. This documentation is available to anyone on a royalty-free basis under Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise (OSP).
Fostering More Open Engagement
In addition, Microsoft made a number of strides in its effort to foster more open engagement with the IT community, in particular through its Document Interoperability Initiative, which kicked off earlier this year. Since then, Microsoft has hosted a series of regional roundtable events and labs around the world — in Seoul, South Korea; Beijing, China; and Munich, Germany — bringing together more than 30 partners and competitors to test interoperability between existing implementations of Open XML Format and the OpenDocument Format (ODF) on a variety of platforms and devices, including Mac OS X Leopard, iPhone, Palm OS, Symbian OS, Linux and Windows Mobile.
“Microsoft’s Document Interoperability Initiative event was a very productive, collaborative forum,” said John Addesso, senior project manager, DataViz Inc. “Working with colleagues in the industry to come up with real-world interoperability solutions was very gratifying and helped us in our product development efforts. We look forward to engaging in future opportunities.”
Based on input received through the DII and other events and forums, Microsoft is launching the following projects:
| 1. |
Working with Beihang University to develop Uniform Office Format (UOF) translators for Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint so that users will have more options to open and save UOF documents in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2003; more information can be found at http://uof-translator.sourceforge.net. |
| 2. |
Designing a new translator to read from Open XML to HTML, which will provide the opportunity for independent software vendors(ISVs) to enable their customers to launch Open XML documents using lightweight browser-friendly applications; more information can be found at http://www.codeplex.com/OpenXMLViewer. |
| 3. |
Developing PowerTools PowerShell commands for Open XML to enable IT administrators to perform document management tasks; more information can be found at http://www.codeplex.com/PowerTools. |
Continued Commitment to Expanding Interoperability
Today’s software users operate in an increasingly diverse IT environment that is rich with many products and services from many companies. Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles are part of the company’s broader effort to deliver real-world interoperability solutions to customers through product design, community participation, access to technologies, and engagement with standards bodies. The latest updates regarding Microsoft’s Interoperability efforts can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/interop.
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