(AS400=iSeries=System i, is it so hard to keep a single naming convention???)
So we have an AS/400 with Domino on it, and I want someone to submit a web form with an excel attachment, and then i want to take the data in that attachment, and create documents out of it.
Over the web, I can’t seem to access OLE, and this makes sense from a security standpoint. My thought then was to detatch the attachment and save it to the server disk. This works fine, but I can’t view an excel object on an AS400, it seems. How would I get my AS400 Domino install to work with my excel documents.
I want to go in, grab some universal values from row 1, then start making docs of rows 3+. Any ideas?
Subject: I would do something different
I would get the attachment, open the file in memory, and navigate it using the Open Office (OOXML) SDK and get the data. They use script to create the documents. It’s doable, because the document is just in XML format. If you haven’t worked with the OOXML format, it can be a real pain, but it’s the best way forward.
BTW, this means the documents need to be in the Office 2007 formats for this to work (docx, not doc). You can probably do a run time save as to force this, but something to make sure
Subject: Use different server
Thanks for the ideas guys.
I think the only easy way to do this is going to be to save my attachment documents on a server with Windows/Excel, then write the data documents I create from the spreadsheet back to my iSeries Domino instance.
Working with a .csv probably would have worked too, but for various reasons, I did need to use an .xls instead.
Subject: Code it manually?
The only way I can see this happen on an iSeries (and, yes, I do prefer that name today 
is if you code it yourself. I wouldn’t recommend it, though.
Looking at alternatives, you could use a Domino installed on Windows, with Excel, for this specific purpose. If you replicate the application to the Windows Domino server, and have a scheduled agent there taking care of it, it should work. With no users, and only an application server, it wouldn’t be that much of a license cost. Of course, it won’t work if you need the application to create new documents closer to real-time.
Is there any other format you can consider using, something closer to plain text? Some form of character-separated text? It would make life a lot simpler for everyone…
/Peter
Subject: java, using apache poi for .doc.
Subject: oops that should read .xls