Making dynamic data available via ODBC with Python

[Robert Brewer]

Erwin S. Andreasen wrote:
> I have a Python application server that manages several different data
> sets, permits various reports to be run on them and the data to be
> downloaded as tab-delimetered files, all via a web interface.
> 
> I'd like to explore the possibilities of making the data directly
> available in Windows applications (such as Excel, where it would very
> nice to directly do pivot tables from the live data) via ODBC.

Hi, Erwin,

I give my users Excel documents within a web app. They perform a query
to get the subset of data they want to play with, then see that in an
HTML table, with a link to "get it in Excel format". [If the dataset is
huge, they're prompted to preview only, say, the first 10 rows.] When
they request the Excel format, they get the same data (the HTML table!),
with a Content-type of "application/vnd.ms-excel" and no frills; both IE
and Firefox will use Excel to open it. Works wonderfully. Let me know if
you need more details.


Robert Brewer
MIS
Amor Ministries
fumanchu at amor.org