Use Excel Services to enable business intelligence on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 applications

Excel Services is a new technology built and conditioned to interact with Excel spreadsheets, allowing you to add spreadsheets and workbooks to your enterprise dashboards and portals. One of the defining points of this new technology is that it is designed to use Office SharePoint Server 2007 and requires you to be at least familiar with the basic principles of SharePoint configuration and management. In this sample chapter from Programming Excel Services, take an overview of the Excel Services architecture, focusing less on code and more on understanding Excel Services in general terms and grasping the grand design. Then, probe the basic building blocks that drive this new technology. Next, study some of the more advanced concepts of building and integrating sometimes disparate applications on top of the common infrastructure backbone exposed by Office SharePoint Server 2007. Chapter coverage includes:

• Understanding Excel Services and MOSS 2007
• Understanding the history of SharePoint
• Installing and configuring Excel Services

Title: Programming Excel Services
ISBN: 0-7356-2407-0
Published: June 2007
Author: Alvin J. Bruney
Chapter: Chapter 1: An Introduction to Excel Services
Published by Microsoft Press