2003-04-23 20:53:41 -04:00
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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<!DOCTYPE document PUBLIC "-//APACHE//DTD Documentation V1.1//EN" "../dtd/document-v11.dtd">
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<document>
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<header>
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2003-07-12 22:56:50 -04:00
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<title>Jakarta Poi - PoiFS - Java implementation of the OLE 2 Compound Document format</title>
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2003-04-23 20:53:41 -04:00
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<subtitle>Overview</subtitle>
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<authors>
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<person name="Andrew C. Oliver" email="acoliver@apache.org"/>
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<person name="Nicola Ken Barozzi" email="barozzi@nicolaken.com"/>
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</authors>
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</header>
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<body>
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<section><title>Overview</title>
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<p>POIFS is a pure Java implementation of the OLE 2 Compound
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Document format.</p>
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<p>By definition, all APIs developed by the POI project are
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based somehow on the POIFS API.</p>
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<p>A common confusion is on just what POIFS buys you or what OLE
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2 Compound Document format is exactly. POIFS does not buy you
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DOC, or XLS, but is necessary to generate or read DOC or XLS
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files. You see, all file formats based on the OLE 2 Compound
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Document Format have a common structure. The OLE 2 Compound
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Document Format is essentially a convoluted archive
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format. Think of POIFS as a "zip" library. Once you can get
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the data in a zip file you still need to interpret the
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data. As a general rule, while all of our formats <em>use</em>
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POIFS, most of them attempt to abstract you from it. There
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are some circumstances where this is not possible, but as a
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general rule this is true.</p>
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<p>If you're an end user type just looking to generate XLS
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files, then you'd be looking for HSSF not POIFS; however, if
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you have legacy code that uses MFC property sets, POIFS is
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for you! Regardless, you may or may not need to know how to
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use POIFS but ultimately if you use technologies that come
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from the POI project, you're using POIFS underneith. Perhaps
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we should have a branding campaign "POIFS Inside!". ;-)</p>
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</section>
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</body>
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</document>
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