--- /dev/null
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<!DOCTYPE document PUBLIC "-//APACHE//DTD Documentation V1.0//EN" "../dtd/document-v10.dtd">
+
+<document>
+ <header>
+ <title>HSSF</title>
+ <subtitle>Alternatives to HSSF</subtitle>
+ <authors>
+ <person name="Glen Stampoultzis" email="glens@apache.org"/>
+ </authors>
+ </header>
+
+ <body>
+ <s1 title="Alternatives">
+ <p>
+ Maybe it's unwise to advertise your competitors but we believe
+ competition is good and we have the best support reading and
+ write Excel workbooks currently available.
+ </p>
+ <table>
+ <tr>
+ <td><b>Product</b></td>
+ <td><b>URL</b></td>
+ <td><b>Description</b></td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>Formula One</td>
+ <td>
+ <link href="http://www.tidestone.com/">www.tidestone.com</link>
+ </td>
+ <td>An alternative to this project is to
+ buy the $10,000 Formula 1 library
+ and accept its crude api and limitations.</td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>Visual Basic</td>
+ <td>
+ <link href="http://www.microsoft.com/">www.microsoft.com</link>
+ </td>
+ <td>Give up XML and write Visual Basic code on a Microsoft Windows based
+ Environment or output in Microsoft's beta and primarily undocumented
+ XML for office format.</td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>JExcel</td>
+ <td>http://stareyes.homeip.net:8888</td>
+ <td>Frequently unavailable. Little currently known about it's capabilities.</td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>JWorkbook</td>
+ <td>http://www.object-refinery.com/jworkbook/index.html</td>
+ <td>This effort supports Gnumeric and Excel, however the Excel part is done using POI anyway.</td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>xlReader</td>
+ <td><link href="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/xlrd">http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/xlrd</link></td>
+ <td>Provides decent support for reading Excel.</td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>Excel ODBC Driver</td>
+ <td><link href="http://www.nwlink.com/~leewal/content/exceljavasample.htm">http://www.nwlink.com/~leewal/content/exceljavasample.htm</link></td>
+ <td>ODBC offers a somewhat wierd method for using Excel.</td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>ExtenXLS</td>
+ <td><link href="http://www.extentech.com/products/ExtenXLS/docs/intro3.jsp">http://www.extentech.com/products/ExtenXLS/docs/intro3.jsp</link></td>
+ <td>Commercial library for reading, modifying and writing Excel spreadsheets. Not cheap but
+ certainly a lot more affordable than Formula 1. No idea as to it's quality.</td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>J-Integra Java-Excel Bridge</td>
+ <td><link href="http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/bridging/jintegra.asp">http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/bridging/jintegra.asp</link></td>
+ <td>Uses DCOM to an Excel instance on a windows machine.</td>
+ </tr>
+ <tr>
+ <td>Perl & C</td>
+ <td>-</td>
+ <td>There are a number of perl and C libraries, however none of them are consistent.</td>
+ </tr>
+ </table>
+ </s1>
+ </body>
+</document>
</s2>
<s2 title="2.4. Alternatives and Competition">
<p>
- The alternative to this project is to
- buy the $10,000 Formula 1 library (<link href="http://www.tidestone.com/">www.tidestone.com</link>)
- and accept its crude api and limitations. As a second alternative,
- give up XML and write Visual Basic code on a Microsoft Windows based
- Environment or output in Microsoft's beta and primarily undocumented
- XML for office format.
+ Originally there weren't any decent <link href="../hssf/alternatives.html">alternatives</link> for reading or writing
+ to Excel. This has changed somewhat.
</p>
</s2>
</s1>
</s2>
<s2 title="2.4. Alternatives and Competition">
<p>
- Alternatives to using HSSF to manipulate Excel files include:
- </p>
- <ol>
- <li>Buy the $10,000 Formula 1 library
- (<link href="http://www.f1j.com/">www.tidestone.com</link>)
- now owned by Actuate and accept its crude api and limitations.
- </li>
- <li>Give up XML, Java, and operating system independence, and
- write Visual Basic code in a Microsoft Windows based environment
- </li>
- <li>Try writing output in Microsoft's poorly documented XHTML
- for Office format.
- </li>
- </ol>
- <p>
- There is also a decent library for
- reading Excel documents written by Andy Khan called xlReader
- (<link href="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/xlrd">http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/xlrd</link>).
- It does not provide write ability.
- </p>
- <p>
- There are a number of PERL and C alternatives.
- None are consistent.
- </p>
+ Originally there weren't any decent <link href="../hssf/alternatives.html">alternatives</link> for reading or writing
+ to Excel. This has changed somewhat.
+ </p>
</s2>
</s1>
<s1 title="3. Project Overview">
projects / poi.git / commitdiff