Beginning InfoPath™ 2003

Chapter 18. Manufacturing Plant Case Study

All of the earlier chapters in this book have tried to prepare you for completing an InfoPath solution. This chapter ties together many of the lessons and techniques learned, for the purpose of constructing an InfoPath solution that allows maintenance crews to check and report the status of the boiler system associated with a particular building. However, many of the topics in this chapter require an understanding of previously covered concepts, while several will reference code written previously. This chapter also requires some general understanding of data store concepts including Microsoft Access and XML Web Services to deliver the data.

There are many reasons for creating an InfoPath solution for this project, including:

• Combining data from multiple boilers into a common data store.

• Better analyzing boilers historical data.

• Posting results of the boiler system to a Sharepoint portal from better analyzing by staff that does not have InfoPath installed on their computer.

• Allowing building maintenance crews to use a tablet PC and InfoPath for more efficient data gathering.

For the purposes of this case study, an Access database will be created using Microsoft Access. This database will be the data store and will be accessed by an XML Web service that that has been created with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003, and the .NET Framework 1.1.