With most Excel spreadsheets, you enter data manually into cells and then use formulas or other functions to analyze it or perform calculations. If you have a large data source, such as an Access ...

The query gets just the information you want from Oracle -- customer lists, stock numbers or sales records -- and prepares an Excel spreadsheet file from the data.

n the Java Q&A entitled "It's Excel-lent," I presented a method for reading Microsoft Excel documents via JDBC.