Excel (or) XML?

[kiransalu]

We are designing an web based application for our client. All the users are very familiar with microsoft office product. They have huge amount of data in ms-excel files.
They will upload the excel files(on a daily basis) through the browser. The excel file will be sent to the middle tier and using ADO 2.0 we extract the data from excel and validate it. After validating, we will insert the data into oracle database.

Everyone says that using server side office application affects the performance. Instead i have been asked to use XML for data transfer. so my browser should extract all the data from the excel file and stream(xml string) it to the server. is it possible?

I have tested some samples with both excel and xml.

i don't find any performance related issues.
I have asked to present a report on using excel file or XML string for data transfer. Kindly help me please.

 

[HobbitK]

Possible ... yes. but it requires alot more programming.
the contents of each cell will have to be concantenated into a comma delimited string, streamed, then on a server side component, you can use a CSS (cascading style sheet). Validate that and Insert.