Question

Aim to achieve :
Want to dump a fetched table to a excel sheet.

My implementation :

Imports System.Data.OleDb

    Private Sub getRawDataNextMonth()
    Dim sheetName As String = "RawData"
    Dim con As New OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=C:\rawData.xlsx;Extended Properties=""Excel 12.0 XML;""")
    Dim adapter As New Data.OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter("SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]", con)
    Dim dataSet As New Data.DataSet
    adapter.Fill(dataSet)
    Dim dataTable As Data.DataTable = dataSet.Tables(0)
    Dim rawData(dataTable.Rows.Count, dataTable.Columns.Count - 1) As Object
    Dim range As Excel.Range = WB.Sheets(sheetName).Range("A2:T" + dataTable.Rows.Count.ToString())
    For col = 0 To dataTable.Columns.Count - 1
        For row = 0 To dataTable.Rows.Count - 1
            rawData(row, col) = dataTable.Rows(row).ItemArray(col)
        Next
    Next
    range.Value2 = rawData
    End Sub

I am new to data fetching and ADO.Net concepts and just got it working.
But..

This seems to be very inefficient and lame to me.

So, can you help reducing the complexity and may be improve performance ?

A totally different (Better) implementation is most welcome !

Please help me optimize this… with your experience !

Answer 1

This function writes out to a text file as CSV format and then opens the file in Excel and saves it as xlsx format. I tried this with a 53 column x 10,000 row table and it took ~2 seconds:

Private Sub Export3(ByVal filename As String, ByRef dt As DataTable)

        Dim tempfile As String = Path.GetTempPath + Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(Path.GetTempFileName) + ".csv"
        Dim sb As StringBuilder

        Using sw As StreamWriter = New StreamWriter(tempfile)
            sb = New StringBuilder("")
            For c As Integer = 0 To dt.Columns.Count - 1
                sb.Append(dt.Columns(c).ColumnName + ",")
            Next
            sw.WriteLine(sb.ToString.TrimEnd(","c))

            For r As Integer = 0 To dt.Rows.Count - 1
                sb = New StringBuilder("")
                For c As Integer = 0 To dt.Columns.Count - 1
                    sb.Append(dt.Rows(r).Item(c).ToString + ",")
                Next
                sw.WriteLine(sb.ToString.TrimEnd(","c))
            Next
        End Using


        Dim xlApp As Excel.Application = Nothing
        Dim xlBook As Excel.Workbook = Nothing

        Try
            xlApp = New Excel.Application
            'xlApp.Visible = True 'for debugging
            xlApp.DisplayAlerts = False
            xlBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(tempfile)

            xlBook.SaveAs(filename, Excel.XlFileFormat.xlWorkbookDefault)

            My.Computer.FileSystem.DeleteFile(tempfile)

        Finally
            If Not IsNothing(xlBook) Then
                xlBook.Close()
            End If
            If Not IsNothing(xlApp) Then xlApp.Quit()
        End Try
    End Sub