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Which is the best 3rd party library to use for exporting data and generating charts in the Excel from Asp.net. I have researched on .Net and found the following:

1. EPPlus: Since we are to work in a very tight schedule and the project is also not too long, so we will not be having much time to resolve issues if we get stuck somewhere after using the component. Since that is an open source library, so the time guarantee to get a help to get the issue resolved cannot be there.

2. Spreadsheetgear2012: This seems to be a good library and its site seems to show a good amount of charting examples.

3. Aspose.Cells: This also seems to be a good library and its site seems to show good charting examples although its a bit pricey, but their support seems really good and they seem very open to new ideas from clients to implement in their product and release a new version.

We are not able to take a final call whether to go for Spreadsheetgear2012 for .Net or Aspose.Cells. Any details and ideas will be highly appreciated.

The comparisons that I was able to find on internet for these products were pretty old (around 4 years back).

Hossein Narimani Rad
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user2142938
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3 Answers3

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Our main application is online interaction and reporting from a spreadhseet, rather than generation and downloading of other spreadsheet files. We tried quite a few spreadsheet deployment options and in the end went with Spreadsheetgear. We found it to be very simple to set up, fast and flexible for this purpose. Their online examples and support are also very good.

We have moved on from their examples and have been able to set up their API with an MVC3 ASP.NET framework. It is quite a task to get it working but in the end MVC makes for a very neat code structure and much faster deployment of applications. The combination is highly recommended.

Xcheque
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What is the most important to you? Cost, long term plan or support?

The first one is free so if cost is your biggest constraint, you really don't have options.

The second one is cheaper than your last one but it seems to have a smaller user community.

So if you run into trouble, where do you find help?

The third one provides a full series of other related products too. If you think you may need other products later, then you can bundle your existing license and that can save you money.

I am using the third one at work and think it's a good product. They have large user community and their support is responsive. But it does come with a hearty cost.

Ray Cheng
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You are missing another player in this space that, while not as spiffy or as speedy to plug-and-play as the paid options, could perhaps be enough to get you where you need to go with your spreadsheets: NPOI. Even if you don't use it for your current project, it still could be worth looking into as a tool to use at a later point.

CodePlex
http://npoi.codeplex.com/

Scott Mitchell on NPOI
http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/archive/2011/06/08/export-an-ado-net-datatable-to-excel-using-npoi.aspx

Leniel Macaferi on NPOI
http://www.leniel.net/2009/10/npoi-with-excel-table-and-dynamic-chart.html#sthash.VZ4NjvZK.dpbs

Zach Hunter on NPOI
http://www.zachhunter.com/2010/06/improved-npoi-exportdatatabletoexcel-function/

mg1075
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  • I did had a look at NPOI and some sites recommend EPPlus over NPOI in terms of speed. But it is open source and if we run into some issues while using it, there will be no backtrack. Since Aspose and Spsheetgear are settled players who can be totally relied on, in terms of the current product and also in the support, thus wanted to have a choice between Aspose and Spreadsheetgear2012. But 1 thing interesting in Scott's article is "Content-Type of application/vnd.ms-excel,has worked well enough over the years, but such data cannot be viewed from the iPad". I will have a look at it 4 sure. – user2142938 Mar 07 '13 at 10:01