Access & Visio Services in SharePoint 2010

Introduction

Visio Services lets users share and view Visio Web drawings and when used with SharePoint 2010, Access Services allows users to create new databases with forms and reports that run in the browser. Access and Visio services have a strong appeal to many developers as they are able to offer a hosted browser-based version of their app. This could be particularly helpful in developing in-house applications as well commercial ones.

Visio Services in SharePoint 2010

Visio Service helps to update and refresh web drawings from remote data sources. This lets users to share and view drawings conveniently irrespective of the physical location. Visio web drawings have the extension of *.vdw files. These files are rendered by the browser as a result viewing Visio documents do not require to have Visio application or Visio viewer installed on their computer locally. Visio web access Web Part takes care of the basic exploration and navigation of the rendered Web drawings. The functionality and interface of the Web Part can be configured easily by the Page designers.

Visio drawings hosted on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 can be updated and refreshed so as to reflect the changes in the published graphics and texts all through in real time. Visio service do not render standard Visio drawings (*.vsd files) and they require Microsoft Visio application to view. However, Visio web drawings (*.vdw files) though not editable do not require Microsoft Visio application and can be rendered by the browser alone when published on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Visio Service Interfaces

• Visio Services class library: Enables creating custom data provider for Visio 2010 drawings

• ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript) object model: provides an interface to interact Visio 2010 diagram in the Visio Web Access Web Part programmatically.

Visio Services class library

Microsoft.Office.Visio.Server namespace can be used build custom data providers. These data providers can be used to refresh data through programs.

Visio Service API

The Visio Service API contains two classes under the namespace Microsoft.Office.Visio.Server:

1. AddOnDataHandler Class: This is an abstract class which is inherited to create custom data modules. These modules can be used to query data sources where server does not have any built-in support. The inherited modules are generally public class which implements its abstract members and IAsyncResult interface.

1. AddOnDataHandlerException: This is base class representation of an exception thrown to notify an error message to the user. The Error property of AddonDataHandler can be set to handle any type of exception. However if the exception is of type AddonDataHandlerException error message of that type is shown else shows a generic error message.

ECMAScript Object Model

The JavaScript object model in the Vwa Namespace consists of following classes:

These classes’ helps to access Visio drawings displayed as Web drawing (.vdw) files in the Visio Web Access Web Part through code like manipulating data about diagrams, pages, and shapes, creating mashups that highlight shapes, placing overlays on the diagram, responding to diagram and mouse events, and changing the panning and zooming properties of the viewport.

Access Services in SharePoint 2010

Access services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 can be used to edit, update and create shared Microsoft Access 2010 databases. The database can be viewed and manipulated through the browser by the client. It is possible to publish Access 2010 applications in SharePoint 2010 which makes it easy for the other users to access it through their browsers. This reduces the total cost of ownership through a common user experience, development and deployment strategy.

Though these services will be of some limited functionality in comparison to their desktop version, yet it is more scalable. Customers would benefit from the server-side rendering while using centralized version of the document and have access to multiple users and security control. SharePoint Rendering Vision diagrams are now easy through SharePoint 2010 Visio services. Also it does not require having any Visio software in the client-side.

For running Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies 2010 (SSRS) is required to be installed. The SSRS add-in is available free. This provides a set of features that enable you to run Access Services reports in SharePoint.

There are two modes of running Reporting Services with SharePoint Server

1. Connected Mode: This is standard default mode that requires SharePoint Server, SSRS add-in and the SQL Server 2008 R2 Report Server. With multiple Web front-ends in your SharePoint farm set up using Connected Mode is recommended.

2. Local Mode: This requires SharePoint Server and SSRS add-in. It is a light-weight setup of reporting Services without any Reporting server. Users can view only in this mode and have no access to server side features. SharePoint farm with only one Web front-end Local Mode is the recommended set up.

Conclusion

Associated with information, regular business activities have some specific problem to solve. Our choice of Business Intelligence tools depend on that particular problem. There are basically three such areas where Access and Visio Services of SharePoint 2010 come to the rescue: personal (and self-service), team or community, and organizational. For example to make important business decisions at corporate level, knowledge workers may use Access Services or Visio Services effectively.

Also there may be overlap areas of representation. By design they operate seamlessly with individuals or teams within an organization. For example Access Service Reports or Visio diagrams can be published in a PerformancePoint dashboard. This fluidity when used effectively will certainly benefit the developer, knowledge worker and others in the organization in making important business decisions.

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