Excel-Table Build V1.014
===========

Many spreadsheets are used to store semi-structured lists, such as
catalogues, manifests, etc. in a table-like structure. These files
typically evolve over time, and come to resemble databases,
particularly in the case of Excel workbooks, where multiple
worksheets are used in unison.

Whilst DBD::Excel can be used to provide an SQL-like interface to
such sheets, it may not be practical to do so, and certainly for
programmers not familiar or comfortable with SQL. This is
particularly true for spreadsheets which have evolved over time and
may not exhibit good database design, such as normalisation or
consistent "column" naming.

This module allows sheet data (assumed to be similarly structured
to tables) to be processed as arrays (or hashes if desired) of rows
with the ability to retrieve meta-data such as maximum value length,
titles, etc. It also allows for duplicate column naming which often
occur in such sheets which don't lend themselves well to handling
via DBD.

It leverages existing Excel parsing modules and as such caters to
older and newer Excel formats.

INSTALLATION

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL INSTALLDIRS=site install_base=/your/site/prefix
   make
   make test
   make install

DEPENDENCIES

This module requires these other modules and libraries:

  Data::Dumper
  Spreadsheet::ParseExcel
  Spreadsheet::XLSX
  File::Basename
  Carp
  Log::Log4perl

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2012 by Tom McMeekin

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.10.1 or,
at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.


