RE: Producing Excel spreadsheet from XML data

we've been looking into the same type on thing here, but not with the UNIX
twist... there is a component called 'Formula One':

http://www.hallogram.com/formulaone/

that takes it's own specific XML format and produces an Excel workbook.  The
component is prety good, but kinda slow for our needs with large files (>
8MB), so we are writing our own piece that will take the new Excel 2002 XML
format and create a workbook with it.  This way, for users that have Office
XP, we don't need to use the component, but for those with older versions of
Excel, the component can create a regular workbook... plus we don't have to
write new XSL for Formula One and then Office XP...

Check out Formula One, though, because it may be what you want...

-putman



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of MacEwan,
James (Information Services)
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 10:29 AM
To: 'xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject:  Producing Excel spreadsheet from XML data


Hi,

My question is of the general architectural type, similar to the one about
Quark yesterday.

I am investigating populating an Excel 97 spreadsheet with an XSLT
transformation of existing XML data.  I would like to produce the
spreadsheet file as an enhancement to an existing batch process on a (DONS
ASBESTOS SUIT) Unix server (ASBESTOS SUIT OFF).

Similar to the answers about Quark, I suspect that an XSL solution that
directly produces a pretty, formatted spreadsheet will be really ugly if not
impossible under Unix.

Instead will I have to implement a three step process?  (1) call an XSL
script to transform my input XML into an output document (say a CSV text
file) that contains the desired data. (2) FTP the output document to my NT
server (3) write VBScript to import the output document into the pretty
Excel spreadsheet.

Does anyone have any comment on the appropriateness of the above approach?
Are there any better suggestions?

BTW:  I had a look at the Microsoft site at the Office XP product
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnnews/2001/may/Excel/Excel.asp
and it looks as though this version of Excel separates data from
presentation.  Is this true?
If so then I could choose to do the XSLT processing on Unix to produce an
XML document.  My users are not likely to be on this version of Excel for a
long time, so it does not appear that I can take advantage of this
technology any time soon.

Thanks,


James MacEwan
Software Developer
Investors Group Inc.
mailto:James.MacEwan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
v: (204) 956-8515
f: (204) 943-3540


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