Calling a Web Service from Excel (without Office XP WSTK 2.0)

[pdt333]

Hello All,

I am a Java Programmer and as a part of client delivery I need to supply some sample test clients using MS Excel. I have done some MS Visual Studio programming earlier, but in the company where I work we don't have any MS Visual Studio Licenses. So my excuses if this question sounds too rudimentary.

Here goes;

Requirement:
Using Excel to interact with a web service.

Possible Solutions:
1. Using Office XP web services Toolkit 2.0, I can import my generated Web service into Excel and generate type safe classes. However because of the complexity of our WSDL (input Schema) it would be a pretty complex piece of code. If nothing works I am going to give this a shot anyway.

2. Make a quick and simple solution (this will also make the client happy btw) is to have a cell in Excel where I fill in the entire input SOAP request as String and using a 'Press Me!' button read this String and send it to a host / port containing my web service.
That's where you experts come in, I have no clue how to get this done from within Excel.
Can any one help?

- Regards Prashant.