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I need to process large excel file (300-500 MB). I need to convert it to XML file (of similar size).

In the excel i just need to read the data in single forward only way. Support for XLS and XLSX is required. Performance is critical.

I am confused between following options
1. Excel Interop: Requires office components in client machine. Hence not recommended.
2. Ole DB: Just checked it loads entire file in memory. So does not sound good to me.
3. Open XML: Does not support XLS file format

Please suggest the other better alternatives and comparitive analysis of above approaches. (To read large excel file xls/xlsx format in forward only manner)

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Would it be possible to convert your .xls files to .xlsx beforehand? It sounds like OpenXML would be your best bet, if not for its incompatibility with .xls –  Brian Snow Nov 27 '12 at 0:55
compatibility is required :( –  Tilak Nov 27 '12 at 3:01
Just found this, but I've never used it. Maybe check it out, it seems to be compatible with .xls and .xlsx: code.google.com/p/npoi –  Brian Snow Nov 28 '12 at 16:43
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