On e of my current requirements is to take in an Excel spreadsheet that the user updates about once a week and be able to query that document for certain fields.
As of right now, I run through and push all the Excel (2007) data into an xml file (just once when they upload the file, then I just use the xml) that then holds all of the needed data (not all of the columns in the spreadsheet) for querying via Linq-to-XML; note that the xml file is smaller than the excel.
Now my question is, is there any performance difference between querying an XML file with Linq and an Excel file with OledbConnection? Am I just adding another unneccesary step? I suppose the followup question would be, is it worth it for ease of use to keep pushing it to xml.
The file has about 1000 rows.
For something that is done only once per week I don’t see the need to perform any optimizations. Instead you should focus on what is maintainable and understandable both for you and whoever will maintain the solution in the future.
Use whatever solution you find most natural 🙂