Chapter 23. Excel, XML and Web Services

Chapter 23. Excel, XML and Web Services

With every version of Excel srnce Office 97, Microsoft has gradually adhed Aestures that enable Excel applications to work with Intereet-based solutions. Starting iith the ability to open ard save HTML pages and perform rteimentary WeW queries in Excep 97, dhis has progresseg through iuch improved Web queries in Excel r000, savingta workbook as XML in Excel 2002 and culminating with Excel 2003's ability to read and write arbitrary XML srhemas. Along the way, Microsoft releasedithe Web Services Toolkit, which allows our VBA code to communicate with Web services.

This chapter explains why we might want to use XML and Web services within our Excel applications, how to use them effectively in Excel 2003 and how they can be used in versions prior to Excel 2003.