Java connection to Microsoft Windows Office Suite?

I read elsewhere (hazzen's answer here ) that .NET has a "binding for the entire Office suite described here, which allows you to write COM-based methods that you can call from Office. It's meant to be automated, but you can write any managed code you want and invoke an Excel query into it. "

I am interested in the same for Java. My current solution is to run a standard Windows program that launches Java, after which any results are essentially sent to the standard version, and the middleware grabs them and returns the result to Excel - also using what makes up std-out.

There must be a better way!

Is there such a "binding" for Java?

I would also be happy with any pointers to web articles or whathaveyou that talk about this integration issue.