Re: OFF-TOPIC: Word

Hi Borja,

 

Even though this message is a bit off-topic, it is definitely an interesting problem I'm personally very interested in.

 

The first part is easy: you can use BLOB field to store any type of document in a database. You will probably have additional fields that will capture some of the document's metadata, which will later allow you to search for and find appropriate document. This might include things such as document name, title, subject, author, keywords, etc.

 

Second part is much more interesting: how do you customize Word in such a way that it allows you to save document in your database? I believe it's doable, and there are a few possible options, but I haven't done something like that before so these are just the ideas:

 

1. WebDAV

 

Word (or any Office application, for that matter) can read/write document from/to WebDAV repository. If you can build a layer on the server that will expose your documents through WebDAV, this might be an option that will definitely work. The only open source WebDAV implementation I'm aware of is Apache Slide, and it is customizable enough to allow you to do what you want, if you don't mind having Java on the server.

 

Potential upside is that you don't have to do any client-side customizations, as WebDAV is natively supported, but on the other hand, you would have to learn quite a bit about WebDAV and write some not so simple code on the server.

 

2. Direct DB access

 

I'm not sure if you can replace default Open/Save functionality, but you can definitely add new menu items such as "Open from DB" and "Save to DB". This would allow you to do anything you want on the client, and as long as you have DB credentials you can easily connect to the database and read/write documents to it.

 

The downside is that each client needs to have database credentials, which might pose security and maintenance issues. Also, it is not the most efficient use of DB server resources, as each client needs its own connection, although this probably wouldn't be a problem as connection would have to be open only when reading or writing document from the database.

 

3. Indirect DB access

 

This is probably my prefered option, where you would ask a "middle-man", such as web service, to open or save a document, and web service would be responsible for communication with the database.

 

This solution requires a bit more up front work, but it allows you to remove database details from each client.

 

 

Unfortunately, I cannot provide much more guidance on how to implement any of these solutions, but hopefully they will help you look in the right direction and figure out how to implement one which works best in your particular situation.

 

Please keep me posted on the progress, I'd really liek to know what is the final solution you came up with, even if it's non of the above :-)

 

Regards,

 

    Aleks

 

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From: springnet-developer-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:springnet-developer-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Borja Riesgo Juan
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 9:35 PM
To: Aleksandar Seovic; springnet-developer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Springnet-developer] Word

Hello
 Maybe this is not the correct list but as i can imagine there must be people who know this. I work with .NET.
I ´m working with an application that generates Word Docuuments. I have successfully generate them and now i show them on the screen. The problem is that i would like to store them on a Data Base that is on a server. How can i store the document in a DataBase? and how can i change the behaviour of the save button of word but instead of saving in the disc will save on the DB? May i change the bhaviour of other button?
Best regards,

Borja

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Gracias por su colaboración.

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