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Asked: 2026-05-28T11:17:23+00:00

I need to make an excel file which would fetch data from connection to

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I need to make an excel file which would fetch data from connection to ms sql table. At the moment, I am exporting the data to xml (through mvc 3 page), and then getting it into excel this way: http://xignite.web-services-blog.com/2011/03/how-to-import-market-data-into-excel-using-xml/ .

I don’t want to simply generate excel file with data, as I want user to be able to hit refresh button in excel and fetch fresh data at any moment in time. My problem is, there can be up to 100 000 rows, and excel is really slow at parsing xml files this way, it locks whole cpu core for minutes. It’s impossible to use it.

Are there any more optimized way to achieve this? I could try fetching the data directly from ms sql, but I don’t want the user to be able to read the whole table – he should be able to read only “his” rows. That’s why currently I’m using xml – I can include his login in the link, and then only return rows that he has access to. If I would give him access to ms sql, I’d have to create separate logins and views for each client, which would be a pain to automate… Besides, I’m unsure how much faster would that be?

Sorry for the unclear description – I’m not exactly sure what this way of importing data to excel is called, and couldn’t really find much about it either.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you are already using a web server to generate the XML file, then consider generating a CSV file on the fly from the database. The user can then import data from this CSV file. This would work as following:

    1. User opens his spreadsheet and clicks Refresh.
    2. User’s Excel connects to a URL, say http://intranet/report.csv?username=Bob.
    3. Web server connects to SQL server and executes a query.
    4. Web server creates a MemoryStream ms object.
    5. Web server uses DataReader or SqlDataReader to read query result and writes it to ms in CSV format (comma-separated values).
    6. Web server responds with Content-disposition: attachment; filename=report.csv header and sends CSV to user using Response.BinaryWrite().
    7. User’s Excel receives report.csv and uses it refresh the contents of the user’s spreadsheet.
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