Extending client to access Excel files (most data still in SQL Server)

[Christopher Stolte]

We are building a general query tool for accessing data in our
company. The primary data source we access is SQL Server running on a
remote host, using OLE DB and C++. However, our users also want to be
able to use our tool to analyze data in Excel or delimited text files.
We are considering two options:

* using the Jet 4.0 driver to directly access the files and to
execute SQL against their content.
* embedding MSDE 2000 in our application and loading (temporarily)
the data into the instance and purging it when the application exits.

Any thoughts on either approach?

thanks

Chris Stolte

[David Portas]

Can't you create ETL processes to move the Excel and text file data into
your database? It's very difficult to get meaningful results from querying
unstructured text and spreadsheet data because of the lack of validation and
metadata. Also, if this data is useful to a user in a report then it's
important enough to go in a shared, managed database. You don't want your
organisation's valuable data hidden away in spreadsheets and text files if
you can avoid it.

--
David Portas
------------
Please reply only to the newsgroup
--

"Christopher Stolte" <cstolte@stanford.edu> wrote in message
news:ee6ef4bf.0307121418.786916cf@posting.google.c om...

> We are building a general query tool for accessing data in our
> company. The primary data source we access is SQL Server running on a
> remote host, using OLE DB and C++. However, our users also want to be
> able to use our tool to analyze data in Excel or delimited text files.
> We are considering two options:
>
> * using the Jet 4.0 driver to directly access the files and to
> execute SQL against their content.
> * embedding MSDE 2000 in our application and loading (temporarily)
> the data into the instance and purging it when the application exits.
>
> Any thoughts on either approach?
>
> thanks
>
> Chris Stolte