Re: Access Excel formulae from an RPG

[Scott Klement <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dave,

It's possible to create a spreadsheet with POI, and call the Java class 
that evaluates a formula.  Assuming you're running V5R1 or higher, RPG 
can call Java methods, so your RPG program can insert a formula and get 
it's result, etc.

POI's documentation for formula evaluation is here:
http://poi.apache.org/spreadsheet/eval.html

(The docs examples are all Java...  but it's possible to do the same 
thing from RPG, you just have to code your own prototypes.)

Not sure if that's helpful?

On 3/15/2012 4:19 PM, Dave wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Today I was presented with the most complex set of mathematical
> instructions in an rpg program I have ever seen. (insurance tariffs).
> I was not involved in the development but as I was involved in other
> tests on the product, that used these calculations, I was asked to
> control the tariffs that were shown during the course of my own tests.
> The user had supplied an Excel spreadsheet which we could use to enter
> any test amounts to get the different details of the tariffs. So, to
> test the rpg code, we are basically creating a client on a 5250 screen
> and checking the displayed tariffs calculated by the rpg program with
> those obtained with the spreadsheet. It doesn't seem right to me that
> we have basically 2 copies of the formulas needed for the
> calculations, the user's in the spreadsheet and ours in the rpg
> program. The rpg code used to reproduce the excel formulae is very
> complicated, and the programmer who wrote it is using the debugger to
> be able to see the result of the different steps in the calculation!
> How could the rpg program access directly the user's formulae? I
> thought web service, but I would not really know where to start.
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions.