There are thrid party controls for working with Excel, but you can also
build an importer for both CSV and Excel with the Microsoft data components
in ADO.NET.
Import from multiple formats is not hard. The hard part is mapping to fields
in your own database. If you have set formats, it is fairly straightforward.
If you have multiple clients with multiple formats, it can get rather
difficult.
For the later scenario, get familiar with at least the factory pattern. It
is also wise to look at Microsoft's provider model and how to set up
"adapters" for your software. The concepts are all similar and basically
come down to treating the UI as a means of pushing the file into a class
that handles the parsing for you.
For mapping fields to internal fields, BizTalk is a nice product. Unless
something has changed in the most recent version, you have to buy an adapter
for Excel from a third party. If this is a shrinkwrap product, a requirement
for BizTalk may throw you out of competition, so consider it carefully.
--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP, MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA
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| Think outside the box! |
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"Ivan" <id*********@bmasoftware.comwrote in message
news:F0**********************************@microsof t.com...
Hello group!
I need to create import utility. My main concern is how will I support
multiple file types. XLS, CVS, etc? Is there any libraries I can use and
distribute (part of framework?) That will help me do that? Or I have to do
all parsing manually?
Thank you,
Ivan
