About the Document Automation Alliance

The Document Automation Alliance is a joint venture between TX Text Control® and GrapeCity® (FarPoint); two companies that provide market-leading products and innovation in document processing.

TX Text Control® is a family of word processing components that offer developers all the features they have come to expect in high-end word processing solutions, in reusable component form. Spread, developed by GrapeCity® (FarPoint), is a full-featured Microsoft® Excel compatible spreadsheet component that provides developers with hundreds of chart styles, supports import and export of native Excel files and unlimited customization options.

The Document Automation Alliance provides developers a one-stop competence center to gain information on how to effectively automate Microsoft® Office documents without attempting to deploy Microsoft® Office - a notoriously complicated process.

Together, TX Text Control® and GrapeCity® (FarPoint) have nearly 40 years of experience in the creation, modification and conversion of documents. As clear market leaders in their fields, they are able to provide top-of-the-line tools and expert knowledge, so that you can focus on your core business, i.e. building high-quality software, while they take care of the underlying technology.

The potential savings that can be gained by simply implementing document automation is enormous. We are extremely happy to have teamed with GrapeCity® (FarPoint) to offer customers a complete document management package: Products and the required knowledge to best utilize those products.
Björn Meyer, Product Manager TX Text Control®.

The integration of Microsoft® Office document processing into business applications can be a complex task. We are glad to have TX Text Control® as a partner to offer both Microsoft® Excel and Word compatible products.
Rick Williamson, General Manager of Developer Tools GrapeCity® (FarPoint).

Learn more about TX Text Control® and Spread.

About Document Automation

Generally, all kind of business applications have to create documents: invoices, reports, quotations or similar business correspondences. Typically, developers author applications that enable end users to modify text and spreadsheets and to create print-ready documents that can be sent via e-mail (PDF), fax or my traditional mail.

The majority of applications deploy Microsoft® Office to create such documents. But even Microsoft® does not recommend automating their end-user software Microsoft® Office:

Microsoft® does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft® Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, ASP.NET, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office may exhibit unstable behavior and/or deadlock when Office is run in this environment.
Source: MSDN: Considerations for server-side Automation of Office.

Potential problems and pitfalls when deploying Microsoft® Office:

Interactivity with the Desktop
Microsoft® Office is an end-user application and such applications need to be made visible in order to work correctly. If an error occurs, an error message might be displayed, which requires user interaction.
Scalability
Microsoft® Office is designed to provide functionality to a single client. It is not recommended to automate Microsoft® Office in server-side applications as it is not scalable.
Stability
"Using [Microsoft®] Office as a service component on a network server may reduce the stability of that computer, and therefore may reduce the stability of your whole network."
Security
"[Microsoft®] Office applications were never intended for server-side use. Therefore, [Microsoft®] Office applications do not take into consideration the security problems that distributed components face."

A much better way to integrate word and spreadsheet processing is by using dedicated software components, built from scratch for such scenarios.

TX Text Control® and Spread are market-leading components for Microsoft® Visual Studio that can load, edit and save Microsoft® Word and Microsoft® Excel documents. You can easily integrate document processing into your business applications without using Microsoft® Office.

Learn more about TX Text Control® and Spread.