Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 is a new addition to the Microsoft Office System. Built from the ground up on W3C XML standards, the native file format of an InfoPath form is standard xml belonging to any customer-defined schema (W3C schemas XSD). As a rich information gathering client, InfoPath opens up new opportunities for developers to seamlessly integrate desktop business applications with data warehouses that store business intelligence. At this session you will learn about the technical design, standards supports and customers scenarios supported by InfoPath. We start with a discussion on the architecture of Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, including how InfoPath supports structural editing, several levels of validation, loading and submitting of XML documents, and multiple views of the DOM tree and the InfoPath programming model that is built on this architecture. We'll then highlight InfoPath's strong support for data validation and web services interoperability. You will learn how to use InfoPath built-in support for submitting XML data over HTTP and XM Web services and how to connect to Access and SQL Server databases. You will also learn how to extend your solutions by writing custom components to retrieve and submit XML data. We will present several scenarios where InfoPath's out of the box integration with XML backend create powerful end-to-end solutions with a shorter development and deployment cycle. We'll conclude this session showcasing the common use of XML in business data flow and highlight the benefits of using XML in business applications.