Server-side Office Integration -1
Abstract: By contract, software applications maybe required to generate or to use one or combination of Office document(s) such as Word Processing, Spreadsheet, and Presentation. Considering this is a huge topic, I will briefly explain this with a small web application that imports an excel spreadsheets content into a database table.
Discussion: During my recent projects, I got a chance to learn more about office documents applications. Major drivers in the office applications are Microsoft (MS Office, proprietary), Sun (Star Office) and Google (Google docs) and the sector is getting more and more attention day by day. It seems that practices leaning towards open source & distributed style development.
How to do server-side Office Integration with DOTNET with minimal coding?
I am sure there could be other ways (Bulk Copy/use of DTS) but here are the options (best to my knowledge)
- Use Office Automation (Microsoft.Office): This is requires installation of the automation DLL and it is not recommended for Internet applications.
- Use Open XML formats. MS supports and recommends this with Office 2007. Users who are running earlier versions of Office (such as Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003) can view and edit Open XML files if the users install the free compatibility pack download from the Microsoft Web site. One of the best of using Open XML would be the compatibility with non-MS products.
- Use 3rd party components (ExcelReader etc...) or build one yourself.
As you might see, Open XML is the winner based on flexibility, platform independency, and performance -hoping to report a comparison later on.
Source link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757
What is Open XML?
Open XML is a file format for representing office document. Its specification has been approved by ISO/IEC standards. With the recognition/standardization, XML has become de-facto for data exchange, thus an Open XML document consists of multiple data files inthe form of XML.
In the next session, I will provide a sample Internet application integrated with MS Office Excel.
Let's say cheese for now.