Architecture of Office Server Extensions

Client Components of Office Server Extensions

Microsoft Office 2000 client computers include Microsoft Office Server Extensions (OSE) client components as part of the Web Publishing feature. With these components, users have Web-based functionality even when they are not connected to an OSE-extended web.

The Web Publishing feature includes the following OSE client components:

• Namespace Extension
• Internet Publishing Provider

These additional components are included when Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 is installed:

• Synchronization Manager
• Internet Explorer 5 cache

The following diagram shows how the OSE components interact on a client computer to provide extended Web functionality in Office 2000.

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Namespace Extension

The Namespace Extension adds the Web Folders object to the Windows environment. The Web Folders object is a container for shortcuts to your Web sites, and it appears immediately below My Computer in the Windows Explorer hierarchical structure.

Through the Web Folders object, users have access to Web sites from within My Computer, Windows Explorer, or the Open and Save As dialog boxes in Office 2000 applications. The Namespace Extension allows users to browse, open, and save documents on a Web site as easily as they work with files on a local hard disk.

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Internet Publishing Provider

The Internet Publishing Provider provides access to files and folders on Web servers. The Namespace Extension and Office 2000 applications use the Internet Publishing Provider interface to upload, download, move, copy, or delete files and folders.

The Internet Publishing Provider supports two types of client/server communication:

• FrontPage Server Extensions — a subset of OSE.
• Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) — an emerging standard Web server protocol.

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Synchronization Manager and Internet Explorer 5 cache

When installed on an Office 2000 client computer, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 supports offline caching — also called replication. A user can work offline from the network on cached copies of published documents. When a user goes online again, the Synchronization Manager copies the locally modified document to the server and reconciles differences in the local and published copies. To enable caching, the Internet Publishing Provider interacts with the Synchronization Manager and the Internet Explorer 5 cache.

The Synchronization Manager ensures that local up-to-date copies of recently used server-based files and other documents that users mark for offline replication are stored locally in the Internet Explorer 5 cache. When a user works offline, Internet Publishing Provider retrieves a document for a user from the Internet Explorer 5 cache by requesting it from the Synchronization Manager.