RE: [xsl] XML to EXCEL

Subject: RE: [xsl] XML to EXCEL
From: Mathy V Arumugam <mathy.v.arumugam@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 09:29:38 -0700
Thank you all so much for your input!

Mathy

At 7/17/2002 09:09 AM, you wrote:
Hi Mathy,

For work I created an excel workbook as an input/output mechanism for an XML based calculation tool. Here are some of the conclusions I came to and ideas which worked well for me:

1] Use minimum VBA code and maximum XSLT

2] write generic excel VBA code to read your excel data into generic XML

3] use XSLT to transform the generic XML to the particular XML format you want

4] use XSLT to do any data validation (rather than code in excel). XSLT is so much more extensible than code and you invariable need to add addition validation rules for all bad data situations you didn't think of. The XSLT validator can produce report XML. Your VB code can just check the report for any error items. If there are any, the code gets the reported transformed and pasted in Excel. Another nice thing you can do is store the excel cell address in the generic XML. WHen the validator XSLT finds a problem it can include the cell address in the report and this can be styled-up into an excel hyperlink. This lets you have a validation report which provides hyperlinks back to the offending data.

5] Use XML + XSLT >> HTML + paste to get your XML into excel (rather then XML + XSLT >> comma separated variable format). CSV works but there doesn't seem to be a nice/reliable way to paste CSV from the clipboard in into Excel. HTML pastes very nicely into Excel.

6] Using a XML + XSLT >> HTML approach means that you can do a lot of formatting with styles rather than having code apply formats to the data once it is in excel.

7] My import/export workbook had to be very generic as I have lots of different tables/data which it needs to handle. I have done lots of VBA excel work in the past but I found that pushing as much work from VB into XSLT made things much cleaner.

Hope that helps.

cheers

Malcolm

-----Original Message-----
From: Mathy V Arumugam [mailto:mathy.v.arumugam@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 11:58 AM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [xsl] XML to EXCEL


Hello,


Can someone advice me on how I can convert XML page to EXCEL?  I am only
interested in converting tables (at least for now :) ).

Thanks in advance.
Mathy


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