How to access SharePoint at runtime?

[Airslash]

Hello,

I'm currently investigating SharePoint for our company as a means to make Excel processing accessible through our web application without relying on the Office Interop DLL files. (our sysadmin doesnt want to install Office on the production server, for good reason)

I'm aware that Sharepoint has an Excel Webservice that can be enabled and used by the application. The problem, if it is a problem, is that I need to make a class that wraps all the logic for transforming an Excel into HTML.
So I need to add the references to this webservice to the application.

But what if we need to deploy the application with a customer that has no SharePoint server available, will this cause a problem in the application? We will use checks to make stuff visible and invisible depending on whether a parameter is set, but I'm looking for a means to ensure that I can for example add the required references at runtime when I need them for Sharepoint.

I hope the question is clear.

[eneyardi]

When you publish an Excel list to a SharePoint site, it automatically becomes a SharePoint list. SharePoint lists and Excel lists handle data in much the same way, with a couple of important differences you should be aware of:

Formulas When you publish an Excel list to a SharePoint site, any formulas in the Excel list will be converted to values in the SharePoint list. If the lists are linked, this means the formulas in your Excel list will be converted to values, too.
Also, if you create a calculated column in the linked SharePoint list, you will be able to read the formulas and values for that column in the Excel list, but you will be unable to edit them in Excel.

Data types When you publish a list to a SharePoint site, each column will be assigned one of the following SharePoint data types:
Text (single line)
Text (multiple lines)
Currency
Date/Time
Number
Hyperlink
If a column has cells with different data types, Excel applies the data type that is appropriate for every cell in the column. For example, if a column contains numbers and text, the data type in the SharePoint list will be text.

Note To ensure the integrity of SharePoint list data, Excel conforms to the data types used in the SharePoint list. If you type data into a cell of either linked list that doesn't match the SharePoint data type for that column, an error message will be displayed.