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24 <title>POI-HSSF - Java API To Access Microsoft Excel Format Files</title>
25 <subtitle>Overview</subtitle>
27 <person name="Andrew C. Oliver" email="acoliver@apache.org"/>
28 <person name="Nicola Ken Barozzi" email="barozzi@nicolaken.com"/>
34 <title>Overview</title>
36 <p>HSSF is the POI Project's pure Java implementation of the Excel
37 '97(-2007) file format. It <em>does not</em> support the new
38 Excel 2007 .xlsx OOXML file format, which is not OLE2 based.</p>
39 <p>HSSF provides a way to read spreadsheets create, modify, read and write XLS spreadsheets
43 <li>low level structures for those with special needs</li>
44 <li>an eventmodel api for efficient read-only access</li>
45 <li>a full usermodel api for creating, reading and modifying XLS files</li>
48 An alternate way of generating a spreadsheet is via the <link href="http://cocoon.apache.org">Cocoon</link> serializer (yet you'll still be using HSSF indirectly).
49 With Cocoon you can serialize any XML datasource (which might be a ESQL page outputting in SQL for instance) by simply
50 applying the stylesheet and designating the serializer.
53 If you're merely reading spreadsheet data, then use the eventmodel api
54 in the org.apache.poi.hssf.eventusermodel package.
57 If you're modifying spreadsheet data then use the usermodel api. You
58 can also generate spreadsheets this way.