Saving Excel OWC data to Web Server

[Jon Sagara]

Say that I have an Excel OWC on my Web page and I want to save any data the
user has entered to the server when s/he clicks on the submit button. Is
that possible?

Thank you,

 

[Scott Allen]

Hi Jon:

You could grab the data through the XMLData property with client side
javascript, i.e.:

var data = FormName.PivotTableName.XMLData;

Then put the data into a hidden inout and POST to the server.

 

[Guest]

But then the user could only ever saye one pivot. Users typically build
several pivot tables that they want to refer to.
It would make more sense to let them save XMLData on their machine.

 

[Scott Allen]

I agree, but it's very difficult to interact with the client machine
from a web application. There are issues of trust and permissions to
overcome in the browser and the operating system before writing and
reading to the hard disk on another computer. If this is an Intranet
app you'll have more options available since your server can be
trusted.

 

[Guest]

Which other options are you thinking of? I just saw an article where you can
use Excel as an ActiveX on the client to perform the save operation. Do you
know of other ActiveX that are capable of the same task? Is it easy to write
such an ActiveX?
In my case (Intranet app) the server is definitely trusted.
Here is the link to the article:
http://www.aspnetpro.com/NewsletterArticle/2003/09/asp200309so_l/asp200309so_l.asp

 

[Scott Allen]

Yes, that is along the lines of what I am thinking of. In an Intranet
app it is a lot easier to configure all the client desktops to trust
your application and let it download controls.

Instead of an ActiveX control, you might consider writing a WinForms
application or control that you can deploy to the client over through
the browser with permissions to write to their hard drive.
See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/programming/winforms/smartclient.aspx

You might want to investigate this article too:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/10/OLAP/
Build an OLAP Reporting App in ASP.NET Using SQL Server 2000 Analysis
Services and Office XP

HTH,