I was recently trying to merge the development branch of cfExcelProxy back into the trunk over at the RIAForge repository. Now I have to admit this was my first time doing this, so it might all be my fault, but for some reason I couldn't get the merge to work.

With the launch of the Wiki yesterday, and with all the work I've been putting into cfExcelProxy recently, I find myself wondering what's left for me to do. I've put pretty much all the features I could think of, but I'm sure I that I haven't thought of everything. That is why I need you, the users, to help me out! What would make this project a full, stable release? Would you like to see more methods available?

I know I promised I'd have a big announcement for you last week, but I don't know if I can talk about it yet, so I'll have to make you wait . Luckily for me, though, I've got some other interesting news for all of you. I've just installed CanvasWiki and prepared a couple of reference pages for cfExcelProxy, my attempt at creating a wrapper cfc for Apache's POI-HSSF Java classes.

Just a quick note to let you all know I made some updates to cfExcelProxy, my wrapper object for Apache's POI HSSF library. Here are a couple of juicy new methods that are now available: setCellsFromQuery, getQueryFromCells, getCellRangeValueAsArray, mergeCells and shiftRows. You can get the source from the cfExcelProxy-rewrite branch in the repository over at riaforge.

Following my post yesterday on Comparing List And Array Speeds, Andy Matthews suggested I use hidden Java methods to perform an array search, as outlined in this Coldfused? post. Intrigued, I decided to put this new-found method in the pit with my other tests.

In my previous post on Optimizing A Query Dump for my cfExcelProxy project, Hem suggested I use arrays instead of lists in some of my operations. After making some modifications to my code, I noticed that I indeed managed to shave a couple of seconds to my total processing time. This got me thinking: Are arrays always better than lists? If not, then when are they better suited?

I've been trying to finalize the rewritten version of cfExcelProxy, and one of the final obstacles I'm trying to get across was reducing the time required when populating an Excel page. In most situations, processing time is rather short. However, in one of my examples I need to dump a query with 4000 rows and 25+ columns... that's over 100k different cells!

As part of the ongoing rewrite of my Coldfusion wrapper cfc for Apache's POI HSSF object, I'm constantly looking into ways of adding more and more functionality. One of the limitations I had struck with my previous iteration was using already available styles from an existing workbook. Let's imagine, for a second, that you carefully take the time to create a basic template in Excel for your reporting.

You heard me. I've been busy rewriting the base code for cfExcelProxy, my wrapper cfc for reading/editing/writing Microsoft Excel files. I was happy with the first draft (0.1), as in I was happy I got it to work at all, but now that I've had the chance to use it in real projects I noticed a couple of things that made it's usage a little, difficult. Amongst other things, I didn't like that I had to specify which sheet I wanted to do each and every operation on.

Ray Camden just approved my project over at RIAForge, so I thought it was a great oppurtunity to talk about it here. Basically, cfExcelProxy is my attempt at using Apache's POI HSSF java libraries to talk to and modify Microsoft Excel files.