To Excel or not... what would you use to create Excel reports? | The Coffeehouse

Our customer wants their web site reports to come out in Excel format. What is the first thing that comes to mind to generate Excel reports?

(After a few responses I'll reply with what my predecessor decided to go with.)

Minh

There are a few libraries out there that can generate Excel format file without requiring Excel to be on the server.

And, you never, ever want Excel running on your server.

harumscarum

depends on how complex. OWC if its fairly straightfoward, aspose if it is something more complex.

Of course the future is excel services from MOSS(?) but afaik it is not free like owc, nor as easy to install.

littleguru

qwert231 said:

(After a few responses I'll reply with what my predecessor decided to go with.)

CSV?

raptor3676

In reply to littleguru

#Jun 26th @ 1:03 PM

Well, as a matter of fact, I already went for CSV once... Customers hardly notice the difference and never requested an "upgrade".

spivonious

Unless some major formatting is required, I think I'd go with CSV too.

Sabot

I would want to know about more about the reports and what they are going to do with them once they have the data. Perhaps provide them with a webservice so they can pump data straight from your system to theirs without using a middle man.

vesuvius

It depends how your current web reports are generated, i.e. .rdls' or some third party solution like crystal reports?

jh71283

In reply to vesuvius

#Jun 27th @ 12:01 AM

Datatable > Excel.

Pace

In reply to jh71283

#Jun 27th @ 12:23 AM

I link a lot of sql server analysis services cubes to excel.

Its brilliant. I create a whole bunch of data sources and views and give them items, dimensions, measure groups. Thry control their own grouping sorting etc by hitting check box's. Very powerful stuff because from one report and one cube its can produce 50 or so different reports (or ways of looking at the report) ... and whats best the user decides! Brilliant

Zeus

I actually am exporting a single dataset through an XSLT template, transforming it to an .xsl file ... and it works like a charm.

qwert231

Well, here's some more info:

These reports are not straight tables of data. It'll have a header, different sections of data, and they want to be able to adjust/add to the data once they get the report.

Currently the solution uses MonoRail.

Matthew van Eerde

+1 on CSV. Keep it simple.

foreachdev

In reply to Matthew van Eerde

#Jun 30th @ 2:07 PM

Teleriks Reporting Framework and Teleriks Rad Grid both export to Excel, PDF, DOC.

SQL Server Reporting Services offers similair functionality.

Point is do not get in the business of manually creating Excel docs. Going third party will usually be easier and result in less maintenance.

BlackTiger

In reply to foreachdev

#Jun 30th @ 2:34 PM

Just XML Excel dialect (not OOXML etc.). Simple and fast. Even OpenOffice can open this format.

qwert231

In reply to BlackTiger

#Jun 30th @ 3:38 PM

I would like to do SQL reporting, but until that is deployed... (Why wouldn't it be deployed?!?!)

XML Excel dialect? Any examples? I think that's the kind of thing the MonoRail code is doing, but it looks like ASP classic, with MonoRail code interspersed in the View file with Markup.