Platform or tools for merging & filtering spreadsheet data online?

Question

My clients produce lots of data in the form of ad hoc spreadsheets, which they want to upload to their web site and then be able to create online, reports that require joins and filtering of the results. These report should not require any custom coding but will be made with the help of the online platform - the users will be able to choose which spreadsheets to join and which results they get.

Is there a platform or a tool that can do something like that?

If these spreadsheets had a predefined structure, then it would be possible to write some server side code that would parse them and give some online options for filtering, but if the spreadsheets are ad hoc it is much more complicated.

One thing that might be possible would be to import the spreadsheets in phpmysqladmin and operate on them as db tables, but the UI is very complicated for my audience.

Answer 1

Can they achieve what they want using an on-line spreadsheet provider, like Google Docs?

If spreadsheet logic can be used to create the final reports, and collaboration is the purpose of putting them online, then perhaps something like this may be suitable?

Answer 2

You can have a look at Excel Services but I'm sure that, and probably all other solutions out there, will require a fixed structure in you Excel sheets.

Like "the users will be able to choose which spreadsheets to join and which results they get" is a bit too fuzzy as a business requirement :) I guess the only tool that would be good at that is Excel itself.

Answer 3

You should try the Open XML SDK 2