Excel as the Backend to a Website?

Question

A third party developer my boss has brought in, designed a "Better" System than our ASP.NET + MSSQL Server 2005 website we're using now.

Here are the relevant specs:

• Excel + ODBC as the data store
• Built using old school ASP, not ASP.NET

Is there any glaring problem with his solution short of the ancient tech? Thread safety etc?

Let me put it this way, "What can tell my boss (who's only partially technical) to blow this code out of the water?"

Thank you,

Vindictive Developer :)

Answer 1

Excel should never be used as a data store,

1. It is not a database

2. It will not handle multiple users at once at all

3. No support for transactions, so if an error occurs in the middle of a odbc call the excel file could end up trashed. (Even access would be better then using excel and that isn't saying much)

4. Excel is a spreadsheet, designed for analyzing data, not for storing data.

Answer 2

Straight from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/195951

IMPORTANT: Though ASP/ADO applications support multi-user access, an Excel spreadsheet does not. Therefore, this method of querying and updating information does not support multi-user concurrent access.