Using Office 2010 web apps with ASP.NET

Question

Would it be possible to use the Office 2010 web apps with an ASP.NET application?

For example: - For each user of my ASP.NET application there is a folder with Word documents on my server - The ASP.NET application displays the available documents in a grid to the user - When clicking on one of the documents in the grid, the Word document is loaded in an IFrame which contains the Office 2010 web apps Word interface and editing of the document can take place - After editing, the document can be saved to the server, and the ASP.NET grid displays an updated status

Would such a scenario be possible? And what do you need, e.g. Sharepoint, Office 2010 licenses?

Answer 1

I think you will want to have a look at Sharepoint, because I think this is exactly what it does (plus many more things).

Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) is a free add-on for windows 2003/2008 server systems and contains the base Sharepoint functionality. In addition there are the commercial products which extend WSS (MS Office Sharepoint Server or Sharepoint Portal Server or whatever they are called).

Answer 2

The Office Web Apps come with SharePoint 2010, but they are also used with SkyDrive. This indicates to me that what you are asking for is possible (Microsoft is doing it), but the software isn't bundled separately. Of course, I have no idea what MS had to do in order to integrate Office Web Apps with SkyDrive.