Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:47:16 -0500
From: Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
To: psql <pgsql-sql@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Import from Ms Excel
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On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 01:42:45PM +0200, Achilleus Mantzios wrote:
> Another fancy lib (although not necessarilly pgsql specific),
> is the POI project from jakarta.
> You can read/write M$ XLS documents from java, and 
> subsequently (via jdbc) manipulate pgsql tables.
> 
> The good part is that you can dynamically generate an excel file
> with arbitary content.

You can do the same thing (I have done it) with Perl using the Pg and
WriteExcel modules.  Excel has a lot of pretty annoying limitations,
though, and it's fairly dangerous to get too dependent on it for this
sort of thing, as you can easily run into its limitations.  I suppose
it depends on how big your resulting spreadsheets are going to be. 
In my experience, though, the first thing that happens when you
deliver someone a summary spreadsheet is, they ask you for the raw
data so they can double-check it.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
This work was visionary and imaginative, and goes to show that visionary
and imaginative work need not end up well. 
		--Dennis Ritchie