create, read and write ms excel through j2ee( jsp, ejb, servlets)

[Naadir Peterson]

Hi...

Can anyone tell me how to create,read and write to microsoft excel sheets...
I need to generate reports and graphs from a database to an excel spread sheet fast and effeciantly through a web application...

Are there any api's available... and is it feasible or a good idea to create reports through ms excel or should i conform to a third-party software?
I found a product called JReport - http://www.jinfonet.com/javareporting.htm
that looks quite interesting...

Please inform me what would be the most appropriate solution.

Thanks

The key to success is knowledge...
The key to knowledge is effort...

[Karthikeyan Rajendraprasad]

for creating/reading/writing excel files you can go for jxl or Apache poi. For generating charts you can use jcharts. all are freewares and easy to use.
[ March 08, 2005: Message edited by: Karthikeyan Rajendraprasad ]

[brad balmer]

You should also take a look at using displaytags:
http://displaytag.sourceforge.net/

It allows you to export a table directly to Excel.

[Jan Rotthaus]

We used Jakarta POI to import an uploaded file into the database, and it was very simple! And - by the way - I like the meaning (Poor Obfuscation Implementation).

[David Plass]

We used POI too, and it was pretty painless for creating XLS.

[Ilja Preuss]

Another option is to use the open office API. More heavyweight and less userfriendly, but also more powerfull, as far as I know.

[somkiat puisungnoen]

Can anyone tell me how to create,read and write to microsoft excel sheets...

I'm create excel file in MS Excel and save as to html(copy to jsp file) file after set content type of jsp for display excel file type.

POI is good tool. and jxl api is easy to use for read/write excel file.