Apache POI - Open Oource Java access to Office Documents
Apache POI is a 100% Java solution for reading and writing Microsoft Office documents. It's also open source, available under the Apache Software License v2. With it, you can read, write and generate Excel, Word and PowerPoint files.
Torchbox has now been involved with Apache POI for a number of years, from back when the project was still Apache Jakarta POI. We make great use of it in a number of our products, including our content management system RationalMedia, and our spidering solution FathomFive. As well as using Apache POI, we are also active contributors to the project, and Nick Burch is currently the Apache VP for POI.
Through our experience with Apache POI, we are able to help our customers make best use of it in a number of ways.
- Support. The POI user and developer lists are an invaluable source of information, but being community lists, getting the answer you need may take a few days. For cases when you don't want to wait, our support contracts offer fast access to answers and assistance with your issues.
- Training. We are able to provide 1 hour overview or update talks, and half day or full day developer training sessions. This can help get new users of POI up to speed, and to keep existing users up-to-date with the latest advancements and new features.
- Consulting. Do you have a hard problem to tackle with POI? Do you need some POI powered code, but don't have the in-house skills to work on it? We are able to offer expert consultation and coding for using POI, to help you get the most out of the library.
- Development. If you need a feature from POI that isn't currently there, we can help with adding that support. We have been involved in adding a number of new features to POI, as required for in-house needs, or the needs of clients who have sponsored new development.
With the new Office Open XML support now being added to POI, which allows it to work with both the new xml based formats from Office 2007 (such as .xlsx, .docx and .pptx), POI is in an excellent position to power your software projects. Whether it's generating new Excel files for your users, processing data from Excel or Word files uploaded to your web application, extracting document metadata and contents for your indexing system, or any number of other uses, Apache POI is the library to help with your office documents.
