Word Automation Services Developer FAQs

Where are the Word Automation Services assemblies installed?

Word Automation Services assemblies are installed to the global assembly cache for use by the service. For development purposes, the assemblies can also be found in Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI.

Can I query the back-end database to perform create/read/update/delete (CRUD) tasks directly?

Like all content from SharePoint document libraries and lists, Word Automation Services content is stored in a Microsoft SQL Server database. However, querying the database directly is not recommended or supported. Instead, use the Word Automation Services API to query the database. For more information, see Programming Word Automation Services

Can I use Word Automation Services without purchasing and installing SharePoint Server 2010?

Word Automation Services is a feature of SharePoint Server 2010. You must purchase and install SharePoint Server 2010 to use Word Automation Services.

How can I learn more about what specific events mean?

For more information, see Word Automation Services Error Messages and Error Codes.

How do I monitor the status of a conversion job?

For more information and an example of how to monitor the status of a conversion job, see Step 4: Create a Web Application Page to Monitor Conversions.

How long will it take for conversions to complete?

Word Automation Services is driven by a timer job that runs periodically to assign conversion items from the Word Automation Services job item queue to application servers. For example, if the Word Automation Services timer job runs every 15 minutes, then a conversion could take as long as 15 minutes plus the time it takes to convert the file. The actual time would depend on when the Word Automation Services timer job is scheduled to run next. The conversion may take longer to process if the Word Automation Services job item queue has other job items waiting to be processed. In fact, many hours could pass before a job item is finally converted in a system where the queue has many items.

How many conversions per second can I expect from a Word Automation Services deployment?

The throughput of Word Automation Services will vary depending on several factors.

When comparing the performance of a single Word client computer against a similar application server running a single Word Automation Services worker process, the Word Automation Services worker process should be between 1 to 2 times as fast as the Word client application. Increasing the number of workers per application server or increasing the number of application servers in the SharePoint Server 2010 farm will increase the throughput of Word Automation Services even further.