Limitations in InfoPath 2007

I’ve just started looking at InfoPath 2007 on the behalf of a customer, since they need some forms software. I liked the idea of the new InfoPath since it, unlike the 2003 version, doesn’t require any software being installed on the client computer.

However, I’ve discovered two important limitations that need workarounds. I don’t know why they aren’t enabled by default in InfoPath, it sounds like an easy enough thing to do for Microsoft:

1) In order to publish the form to a web page, you need to either have the web page in SharePoint or modify your aspx-page a little. Not a lot of work, but it still sounds like something that you could make less complex.

2) If you want the forms data to be saved to a database, the InfoPath client has to be installed on your (assuming you’re the form filler) computer. Or you’d (the developer you) have to construct a web service, which InfoPath can use to indirectly communicate with the database. Direct communication from a web form is not supported.

At least that’s what I’ve understood so far by reviewing the documentation for InfoPath 2007. I haven’t really put my hands on it yet, but hopefully it will be soon.

One really nice thing is the intergration with SharePoint 2007 and Visual Studio, which probably should make heavily customized solutions easy to design and implement.