Manipulate data on a website using an embedded spreadsheet?

Question

Hi all,
I have a website where clients can modify data one record at a time. I am looking at allowing them to modify a number of records at the same time by embedding a spreadsheet while restricting the types of operations they can perform..
What i am looking to do is to embed a spreadsheet such as excel or openOffice (or some other spreadsheet, doesnt matter) within my page that is populated from my database. The spreadsheet will allow the user to modify the populated data and then save the modified spreadsheet data back to the server. As well, I would like to restrict the functionality of the spreadsheet so that user's cannot add columns etc.
My question is this: Is what i want to do possible? Can someone point me in the direction of a product to explore?
Thanks,
-Kevin

Answer 1

KevinGr wrote:
first, people who use my application generally keep their information in spreadsheets so they are familliar with manipulations using them.
second, i would like to allow copying and pasting of values and spreadsheet style data manipulation.We do that sort of thing where I work. It isn't exactly web-based, though. We produce spreadsheets with data in them and send them to people by e-mail or FTP or what have you. We also receive spreadsheets with data in them (e-mail, FTP, etc) and extract the data. But to make a web-based version of that, I would download the spreadsheet (as you envision) and let them mess with the data, then allow them to upload the edited spreadsheet and process it on the server. Downloads are easy, uploads are less easy but still much less complicated than mimicking a spreadsheet in the browser. And since they already have Excel to work with the spreadsheets, that would save you the cost of producing and maintaining an Excel surrogate in the browser.