Question

OWC Excel/Office Pivot Table - Object tag - Server-side data connection?

Asked by: psk1

I have two HTM files, each for displaying an Office/Excel Pivot Table on the web (using OWC).  One was created with FrontPage (insert>component>pivot table, property toolbox>data source...) and one from Excel (select pivot table, save as web page...).

The Excel exporting process produced also a couple of XML files named "filelist.xml" and "...cachedata....xml" containing all data, referenced below.  The core object tag looks like this (long XML data replaced with '...'):

<object
 id="Group_Demand_Report_Chicago_29815_PivotTable"
 classid="CLSID:0002E552-0000-0000-C000-000000000046">
 <param name=XMLData
 value="&lt;!--[if gte mso 9]&gt;&lt;xml xmlns:o=&quot;urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office&quot;&#13;&#10; xmlns:x=&quot;urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel&quot;&#13;&#10;
 ...
 &lt;CacheFile HRef=&quot;pt_files/Group_29815_cachedata001.xml&quot;/&gt;&#13;&#10;
 ...
 &lt;/PTFormat&gt;&#13;&#10; &lt;/PivotTable&gt;&#13;&#10;&lt;/xml&gt;&lt;![endif]--&gt;">
</object>

The FrontPage generation process asked for various data source information, from which I could choose either a data source control, or a connection with command text.  I chose the latter and was forced to pick from a list of installed OLE DB providers.  I picked the Jet provider, put my data in an Access db, typed in an SQL statement got the data connected to the object.  The FrontPage-generated object tag looks like this, and includes no other related files:

<object classid="CLSID:0002E552-0000-0000-C000-000000000046" id="PivotTable1" codebase="file:msowc.cab" width="518" height="205">
  <param name="XMLData" value="&lt;xml xmlns:x=&quot;urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel&quot;&gt;
  &lt;x:PivotTable&gt;
  &lt;x:OWCVersion&gt;9.0.0.3821&lt;/x:OWCVersion&gt;
  &lt;x:CacheDetails/&gt;
  &lt;x:ConnectionString&gt;Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=c:\test.mdb;Persist Security Info=False;Jet OLEDB:Database Password=&amp;quot;&amp;quot;&lt;/x:ConnectionString&gt;
  &lt;x:CommandText&gt;select * from test;&lt;/x:CommandText&gt;
  &lt;x:Name&gt;PivotTable&lt;/x:Name&gt;
  &lt;x:DataAxisEmpty/&gt;
  &lt;x:PivotField&gt;
  &lt;x:Name&gt;ID&lt;/x:Name&gt;
  &lt;x:DataType&gt;Number&lt;/x:DataType&gt;
  ...
  &lt;/xml&gt;">
</object>

Here is my problem.  The Excel-generated object transmits the entire cachedata.xml file to the client upon loading the object.  This is undesirable because the file is too large (can be hundreds of megs).  The FrontPage-generated object, while asking me for connection details upon preparation server-side, stores the connection properties in the object tag, and then looks for this connection client-side, rather than asking the server for data as needed.

I need this object to request data from the server, but not try to download everything all at once as soon as the object is loaded.  What I need to know is whether this OWC is built to handle such a scenario -- can I set this up so that user interaction with the object dictates which data is requested from the server?  Or must the object contain all data client-side, and if so, can it be transmitted in a better way than downloading hundreds of megs of XML data?  If there's a way to code this object tag so that it maintains a connection with the server, reducing bandwidth load at startup, I would like to know about it.

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Asked On
2007-06-25 at 09:46:50ID22656189
Tags

pivot

,

owc

,

table

Topics

FrontPage-Expressions

,

Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Software

,

ActiveX

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
13

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Answers

 

by: zorvekPosted on 2007-06-25 at 09:58:27ID: 19357219

I don't know if you will have that degree of control. Something tells me you won't, otherwise you could build a real client-server application and that just doesn't seem like something this could handle.

You are probably going to have to start adding some custom code to the page like Javascript to modify the query on the fly.

I'm certainly not an expert in this area so please do not take my opinions too seriously :-)

I'll see if I can get some more help...

Kevin

 

by: psk1Posted on 2007-06-25 at 11:01:37ID: 19357694

I see that a parameter in the Excel file is "CacheFile" and that one in the FrontPage file is "ConnectionString".  I wonder if I could get a list of usable parameters for this component and maybe figure out a more efficient way to code this object tag.

 

by: psk1Posted on 2007-08-11 at 17:17:39ID: 19677709

Hi Kevin,

Don't suppose you have anything else to add here?

Anyone else have any thoughts on this subject?

Thanks!

 

by: robotman757Posted on 2007-08-25 at 12:44:33ID: 19768914

I wish I knew more about what the exact goal was. I have been successful in generating custom pivotcharts if the user has excel loaded on their machine. I have easily used OWC to create charts on the web, but again I am not sure I understand what your code is supposed to do. By the way, I have found that a lot of the code generated by Frontpage is not needed and can cause problems on some web servers.

 

by: psk1Posted on 2007-09-18 at 13:42:52ID: 19916432

The goal is to replicate Excel Pivot Table functionality on the web.  I just want to put the data out there;  no server interaction is required (the server doesn't need to know what the user does).  I'm trying to find out what kinds of parameters I can pass to this object.

 

by: psk1Posted on 2007-09-18 at 13:54:59ID: 19916507

I have the pivot table rendering and all, but want to control more through the object parameters, such as where to locate the data source.

 

by: robotman757Posted on 2007-09-18 at 14:08:13ID: 19916585

I have an idea. The control usually prefers data in xml format and that should be straight forward to accomplish directly in excel. I did this in an Access database where I have a spreadsheet control on a form and the control uses an xml file as the source. I did this so that I could control the look of the spreadsheet without doing a lot of coding. I can then use vbs or vbscript in this case to talk to the control. I believe that you can set the datasource directly in the control. If it changes at runtime, there are some examples I have found on google that should work as well.

 

by: psk1Posted on 2007-09-18 at 14:28:39ID: 19916719

Yes, the control is accepting XML data now, via HREF.  I'd like to be able to feed it that data differently..  Specifically, my current issue is this:

The XML data is (at least, as I want it to be) stored in a folder on the web server that is not part of the secure web application.  The current object parameter that points to this data (if I place it inside the app folders) is as follows:  &lt;CacheFile HRef=&quot;%DATAFILE%&quot;/&gt;

I want to be able to tell the client object to read the XML data from a feed, like mydatafeed.aspx?getmethisfile=datafile.xml -- that way, the server can read the XML from the external folder and pass it to the client.

I suppose this is evolving outside of the scope of the question now.. Maybe I'll post this explicitly in another area..

 

by: psk1Posted on 2007-09-18 at 14:53:32ID: 19916872

I got it.  I used Response.TransmitFile ...This may evolve as I continue to develop the project but I'm going to close this question now.  Thanks robotman757!

 

by: robotman757Posted on 2007-09-18 at 15:04:42ID: 19916928

I have had trouble getting anything like this to work as anytime I ry to go to an outside domain/server, I get blocked. This is most likely because all of my stuff is on a local intranet, but I have hear of others having similar issues once thry try to go from a secure web to somewhere else. I might be possible though..

 

by: psk1Posted on 2007-09-18 at 15:14:08ID: 19916982

I'm not going to an external server, which would cause problems with JS/AJAX.  I'm sending the pivot table and its data to the client from a single ASP.NET server, so I just told the server to stream the XML file located in a different part of the server (not within the web app) as though it were a straight HREF linked file.

 

by: robotman757Posted on 2007-09-18 at 15:31:27ID: 19917078

Ahh. That works too. I wish I could do .NET where I am, but we use regular .asp pages..

 

by: psk1Posted on 2007-09-18 at 16:41:29ID: 19917413

I wouldn't be surprised if you could do what I just did in ASP too.

Just to clarify for any future perusers:

In the HTM file containing the Excel-generated Object, there's a CacheFile parameter.  I changed that from a relative HREF (/folderonwebserver/cachedata.xml) to an ASP.NET (could be ASP) page (processrequest.aspx?param=myfileid).  On the server side, the ASP.NET page processes that request and does a Response.TransmitFile("C:\myrestrictedfolder\cachedata.xml") thus giving the client what it asks for even though that XML file isn't stored inside the web app.  

This also enables me to decide on the server side which XML file to give the current user based on Session variables, as opposed to some hard-coded location in the object tag, which could also conceivably open up security issues (a user could read the HTML and find that raw XML file, but if I employ Session variables within my server-side ASP.NET calling page, I can restrict access to my raw data).

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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