Re: Excel Generation Alternatives

One consideration is to overcome difficulties in providing protected & restricted access to the data, for those external to the organization. By using "push", there is no requirement to "open up" the system to external access that would allow performing a "pull" over an interface as "open" as ODBC\JDBC and with minimal complexity as compared to setting up VPN and\or similar specialized access, authorized specific to each external entity.

Additionally, having the data extract and generation of the /report/ done locally for "push" allows scheduling the load on the system versus allowing possibly untimely requests that could either impact other processing [for well-formed queries or otherwise] or possibly for failing to meet SLA requirements for those doing the "pull" because they must be downgraded in run priority to prevent impacting other work on the system.

Regards, Chuck

pholm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

<<SNIP>> What advantages does the RPG POI "Push" approach have
over alternatives such as iSeries Navigator Excel plug in or
using an Excel Web query where you can "pull" data into excel. It
seems the "pull" approaches allows you to format cells, produce formulas, pivot tables, etc using WYSIWYG built in Excel utilities versus coding cells in RPG/Java logic? Isn't this much more productive?