Amen Tony. I don't know how many times I get a call from a user saying for "some" reason my XLS/XLSX parser doesn't work with the "Excel" file they have. What the user really has is a CSV/TSV file with a XLS file extension that some programmer decided to name the file. This is because EXCEL doesn't bring up the CSV/TSV layout when the file has a .xls extension. However, my engine expects a true binary xls or x-zip xlsx envelope when the file has the xls/xlsx extension. Now the engine reads the first 20-50 bytes to determine if it's really an Excel file before attempting to parse it.
It's NOT only U2/Pick programmers who do this little "trick" on the users. I have well known insurance company that does this, and it annoys the hell out of me. I've created excel files with PERL and the spreadsheet::write module when I worked on a HPUX/UD server and windows server for the past 12 years. -----Original Message----- From: u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org [mailto:u2-users-boun...@listserver.u2ug.org] On Behalf Of Tony Gravagno Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 10:06 PM To: u2-users@listserver.u2ug.org Subject: Re: [U2] Building an Excel File Not responding to any particular quote here, just the CSV topic in general. Respected colleagues, CSV is not Excel. If you have an end-user that asks for Excel and you give them a CSV you're just perpetuating the myth that Pick is a dinosaur. They will gladly spend tens of thousands of dollars to replace your application with something that creates real Excel (and PDF) despite the fact that such things can be attained at low cost or no cost right now. Trust me, I've seen it happen. This dove-tails with the reasons why people get 20 people to support Oracle when they can have 3 working on Pick. The reason is that the Oracle people say "yes", and give them pretty reports, when their Pick guys say "no", and give them plain text in columns and rows and call it "Excel". Please don't let that happen to you. Be sure you are properly responding to end-user requests. Just ask them what they do with the documents after you generate them. If they really just want raw data, OK. But if they go on to tell you how many days it takes to reformat the data, assemble the multiple CSVs into a single workbook, etc, then you have found a great deal of room for improvement. Yeah, I've been there too. Off the soapbox, thanks. T _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
