excel or xml

Before I dive into a book I was hoping to get some input from the
community.
I'm thinking of using xml to create reports. Something faster using
excel.
Running
SQL server 2000 enterprise
Windows Office XP pro
I am currently running queries to sql from excel to create large and
small reports.
These reports take some time to run and i was lookining for a better
solution.
XML looks like a good possiblity.
Will xml pull data from my database faster?
I still need to put that data into an excel spreadsheet so that my
sales team can read it.
Will this process be any faster?
Any thoughtsXML documents will be static, you can't edit them or change the formatting
(unless you use an xslt). Excel on the other hand, while larger allows you
to format the content, edit it, and do calculations based on it.
You can write queries that will export results of the queries as XML, or
have them consumed by ADO.net or ADO and have the results stored as XML
documents.
It sounds like your skill set is with Excel right now. I would continue with
it unless you need faster report generation. In that case I would look at
using SQL DTS to generate Excel spreadsheets faster than what I suspect
Excel could do, or even use Reporting Services to mail reports to users.
Hilary Cotter
Looking for a SQL Server replication book?
http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html
Looking for a FAQ on Indexing Services/SQL FTS
http://www.indexserverfaq.com
"b" <brianj7675@.yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1135784830.209886.48340@.o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Before I dive into a book I was hoping to get some input from the
> community.
> I'm thinking of using xml to create reports. Something faster using
> excel.
> Running
> SQL server 2000 enterprise
> Windows Office XP pro
>
> I am currently running queries to sql from excel to create large and
> small reports.
> These reports take some time to run and i was lookining for a better
> solution.
> XML looks like a good possiblity.
> Will xml pull data from my database faster?
> I still need to put that data into an excel spreadsheet so that my
> sales team can read it.
> Will this process be any faster?
> Any thoughts
>