start client excel application from web

[Grey]

My requirement is The user has input data in the asp.net application and the
data has been stored in MSDE. After the user click the save data in MSDE,
the web application will start the client's excel application file with
pre-defined privot table template. when the excel application start, the
data in pivot table will downloaded from MSDE and finally display the
up-to-dated data in the excel pivot table. The user need to do nothing to
display the excel pivot table after clicking save button asp.net
application. Is it possible to do that??


Million thanks ..

 

[Sahil Malik]

As long as the client has Excel installed on their machine, it is possible.
You would have to though create the pivot table containing XLS dynamically
and stream it down to the client with proper headers .. and creating that
excel programatically could get complex.

- Sahil Malik
You can reach me thru my blog -
http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/sahilmalik

 

[Lucas Tam]

Is it possible to do that??

Yes - take a look at the Microsoft Office Primary Interops. You'll need to
dynamically create the Excel file, load it with data, then stream it to the
client.

The streaming part is trival, there are plenty examples on how to do
that... the tough part is generating an Excel file dynamically.

BTW, can you use a server side component instead? It maybe better to
generate the pivot table on the server side, let the user preview the
graph, then allow them to download the excel dataset if they like what they
see.

 

[Grey]

What server side componenet I can use??

Yes - take a look at the Microsoft Office Primary Interops. You'll need to
dynamically create the Excel file, load it with data, then stream it to the
client.

The streaming part is trival, there are plenty examples on how to do
that... the tough part is generating an Excel file dynamically.

BTW, can you use a server side component instead? It maybe better to
generate the pivot table on the server side, let the user preview the
graph, then allow them to download the excel dataset if they like what they
see.