Populating Excel Spreadsheet from .Net Add In which calls web service

[kav123]

I need to populate the spreadsheet by data being returned from the web service. I was thinking of using a COM .Net Add In which calls the web service and populates the spreadsheet.

However, there is also information from the spreadsheet which needs to be extracted to be passed as an input parameter to the web service. Any ideas how this can be achieved??

 

[jmeckley]

There are 3 pieces which you can research independent of one another.
1. creating an Office Add-in
2. Extracting data from Excel
3. calling a web service

Then you just need to tie it all together.

Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.

faq855-7190
faq732-7259

 

[kav123]

Ok, we are using Excel interop to read from and write to Excel. Basically the data needs to be passed to a service which retrieves data from database and a huge chunk of data is populated to Excel.

In terms of performance which would be better and Add-In or a ASP.Net page??

 

[jmeckley]

In terms of performance which would be better and Add-In or a ASP.Net page??

This is the wrong question to ask (or at least start with).

Better questions would be:
1. How does this process fit into the overall workflow of the business/context?
2. What applications are the end users comfortable with?
3. What would be the ideal user experience?

Less important questions, but should still be asked are:
1. What technologies is our team comfortable using?
2. How much time (estimated) will it take to learn a new environment? Have you built a webpage or add-in before?

This should guide the decision making process of what the UX (user experience will be).

there is an expression in software development
1. make it work
2. make it maintainable
3. make it fast

and fast is subjective. If the end user finds the preformance satisfactory and there are no technical problems with the duration of the operation then it doesn't need to be adjusted.

Jason Meckley
Programmer
Specialty Bakers, Inc.

faq855-7190
faq732-7259