At TechEd, Microsoft announced the availability of an Office Open XML (OOXML) SDK. Exciting stuff, it would seem, until you delve even a bit into the details. Instead of letting you add a page, or insert a graphic or add text or do pretty much anything you would want to do with an office document, spreadsheet or presentation, this SDK lets you work with the components of the OOXML package. In other words, it lets you add a graphic to the package, but not show it. It lets you add a new spreadsheet page, if you already hand coded the XML to the OOXML specs. And so on. Of course, you wouldn't think it would take much to accomplish that level of functionality, but... you would be wrong. Below is a small version of the Office Open XML Object Model Diagram (click on the diagram to get the full version on Microsoft's site), but small only visually. It seems like a lot of work for a little bang to me:
Copyright © 2007 Genii Software Ltd.