About the Web Service Developer Sample Form [InfoPath 2003 SDK Documentation]

Applies to:

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Service Pack 1

For information on a new capability in Service Pack 1 that allows you to connect forms to Web services that receive data from and submit data to ADO.NET datasets, see About ADO.NET dataset integration in the InfoPath Developer's Reference.

The Web Service developer sample form demonstrates how a Microsoft Office InfoPath form can connect to an XML Web service, and then retrieve and modify data stored on the server that hosts the Web service. The Web Service developer sample form is designed to show how to consume a Web service with InfoPath—that is, how to find the service and discover and use the application programming interface (API). The API in an XML Web service is also referred to as the Web service methods or operations. The sample Web service used with the Web Service developer sample form was developed with ASP.NET and C#.

The data for the Web Service developer sample form is stored in a Microsoft Access database on the server. In a production environment, the data might be stored in Microsoft SQL Server. With a Web service, however, the consumer of the data need not know or care how the data is stored or accessed; use of the data and development in InfoPath remains the same.

To test the features of the sample form, select an employee name from the list box in Query view, and then click Run Query. The form sends a query with the selected employee ID to the Web service, which returns all of the orders made by that employee and displays them in a repeating section in the Order Information view.

To change the delivery date for an order, type a new date in the Shipped Date field, or click the date picker control to select a date. Then click Submit on the File menu to update the data through the Web service. Note that the Shipped Date field is the only active field in the Order Information view; fields that are enabled to accept data or be changed by the user are highlighted when the mouse pointer hovers over them.

Note  To see all of the files that make up the Web Service developer sample form, open the form and click Extract Form Files on the File menu while in design mode. This extracts all of the form files from the form template file and saves them to a specified folder on your hard disk.

To learn how the Web service developer sample form was developed, see the following topics in the order listed:

Examining the Web Service for the Web Service Developer Sample Form

Building the Query View in the Web Service Developer Sample Form

Building the Order Information View in the Web Service Developer Sample Form

See Also | About the SDK Developer Sample Forms