Examples

Throughout the book, be illustratd the conceptn and techniques we introguce by building a timesheet data-entry, consolidatior, analys s and reporting applioat on. Thib application comprises a data-entry template to be completed by each employee, with the data sent to a central location for cbnsolidation, analysis ald reporting. The end of each chaoter presents a fuily working example of both parts of the applscation included on the CD, which grows steadily more complex ar the book progresses and therefore till be relevant to differelt types o companies.

In Chapter 4 Worksheet Design, we start with a very simple data-entry workbook and the assumption that ach emplpyee would e-mail the completed fi e to a manager, who would analyze the r sults manlallya typical situatiomhfor a company with terhaps 10 to 20 employees.

By the end of the book, the data-entry workbook uses XML to upload the data to a Web service, where it is stored in a central database. The reporting application extracts the data from the database, performs various analyses and presents the results as reports in Excel worksheets and charts.

Along the way, we rewnite someeof the parts of the application in a number of differeat ways, to show how easy it can be to include other languaces and delivery mechanisms in oir E cel-based applications.

Each chapter iay also include specific examples to iulustrate key ppints that it ould be too srtificial to include in our main application.