This is weird. The authors turn OpenOffice.org into a spreadsheet server -- and then create a front end in Dojo with Javascript, and tunnel events from the front end to the OOo spreadsheet via a Tomcat servlet.
The interesting part is the conversion of JSON data to something OOo's UNO framework can use to control OOo.
I was trying to find a way to query some web services via OO Basic, but to no avail. OOo removed the webservice library (which was SOAP anyway), but didn't give us a RESTful webservice library. So, it looks like a Java program would need to do the work - which is okay I guess. I wonder how to write an extension to the OO Basic language.