1.4. Next stop: the Web So far, we have looked at information integration within a single organization. With the arrival of the Web, companies have increasingly focused on information sharing among organizations. Traditionally, companies wishing to share business data either did it the old-fashioned way, by printed reports, phone calls and faxes, or by using expensive EDI systems. The Web has completely changed the face of business by making it possible to share information – and therefore conduct business transactions – far more easily using a standard set of open protocols. Organizations share business documents such as product catalogs, purchase orders and invoices via the Web. Almost invariably the transactional documents are represented in XML. In addition to passing XML documents back and forth over the Internet, businesses have begun to share data with a new class of software called Web services. Web services allow applications to communicate with one another (and even discover each other!) without human involvement. For example, a provider may offer a Web service that returns a stock quote, or the current exchange rate for a particular pair of currencies. A Web service could also be something more complex, such as a service that accepts or places an order. Other applications can execute these services over the Web without any human intervention. Obviously, not all Web services are intended for the public at large. Some are available only to partners with whom a business relationship already exists. But public or private, the Web services software works the same way. Web services use XML to represent requests to a service as well as the information that the service returns. As a result, you can integrate Microsoft Office with XML Web services. You can use InfoPath, Word and Excel to enter inputs to many Web services and to display the results. 1.4.1 Retrieving data from Web services You can request information from a trusted source on the Web, and have it automatically included in an Office document. At Worldwide Widget Corporation, many of the sales reps and consultants travel internationally. When filling out their expense reports, they enter the currency in which their expenses were paid and the exchange rate, on that date, in US dollars. Of course, it is possible for Ellen to direct the employees to a particular website and have them manually look up the exchange rate. However, it would be more efficient and accurate to have the exchange rate included in the expense report automatically. By using Excel to request the rate from a Web service, the consultants can retrieve it and apply it to the expense item. 1.4.2 Office as a front-end to Web services In 1.3.4, "Office as an enterprise data front-end", on page 16, we talked about using Office as a front-end editor for an enterprise application. This use of Office is not limited to internal applications; you can use it across the Web as well. Worldwide Widget Corporation buys parts from a huge number of suppliers, large and small. The smaller suppliers have no real e-commerce systems in place, although they do have PCs in their offices and access to the Web. They receive purchase orders from Worldwide and send it invoices, by phone, fax and email. Worldwide wants to move all the suppliers over to a Web-based ordering system because it is cheaper and less prone to error than the manual process. It develops a set of Web services that allow a supplier to retrieve XML purchase order documents and submit XML invoice documents. The medium and large suppliers have IT departments that can write code to call these Web services automatically from their enterprise accounting systems. The code processes the purchase orders and generates the invoices. The small suppliers, unfortunately, don't have such systems, so they need a human interface to the Web services. Worldwide Widget could develop a Web-based front-end that would allow them to log on and view their purchase orders and create invoices. However, that would require software development skills and time, which are in short supply. Instead, Worldwide designs InfoPath forms for the invoices and purchase orders. They allow the small suppliers to display the POs and prepare invoices that can be submitted as XML documents. | 
