I think this is really a question about approach.
We have a core Excel spreadsheet that comes in from a third party, and it provides some complex analysis of raw data. The raw data arrives directly from customers in a second spreadsheet.
We are looking to create an automated web-server based system where the raw data Excel file can be uploaded and the analysis performed, and a report generated.
The report generation is no problem, but is there any mileage in actually using the core Excel spreadsheet itself within the application to do the mathematics (using PHPExcel for example)? Or is the best approach always to replicate the analysis in code?
Our thinking is that the analysis (which comes in from a third party) is fairly complex, so will take quite a lot of unpicking to replicate in PHP, and secondly parts of the analysis are often being tweaked by the third party meaning new versions of the Excel are regularly provided to us.
I could imagine using PHPExcel to do something like this, creating the sheet in memory and merging the raw data in as a second worksheet, then reading out the calculated results, but is this realistic - would it be too slow - or just simply not work how I am imagining?
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.