Why Not Open XML SDK

We sometimes hear this question:

Why should we use Aspose products rather than the free Open XML SDK?

This question is easy to answer: features and functionality.

What is Open XML SDK?

According to the MSDN Library, the Open XML SDK is defined as:

“The Open XML SDK 2.5 simplifies the task of manipulating Open XML packages and the underlying Open XML schema elements within a package. The Open XML SDK 2.5 encapsulates many common tasks that developers perform on Open XML packages, so that you can perform complex operations with just a few lines of code.”

OOXML documents are essentially zipped XML files and Open XML SDK is a collection of classes that allows you to work with the content of OOXML documents in a strongly-typed way. That is instead of unzipping a file to extract XML, loading that XML into a DOM tree and working with XML elements and attributes directly, Open XML SDK provides classes to do that.

What is Aspose.Cells?

Aspose.Cells is a class library that allows applications to perform the following spreadsheet processing tasks:

• High-quality conversions between all popular Microsoft Excel formats, including conversion to PDF, HTML, TIFF, and printing.
• Programming with a workbook object model.
• Ability to build documents from fragments, from one or multiple documents, while automatically merging data by stylistic formatting, charts, and graphics.
• High-level functions, such as import data from different data sources including Array, ArrayList, DataTable / ResultSet.
• Robust Formula Calculation Engine that supports almost all of the standard and advanced Microsoft Excel Functions.

Compare Open XML SDK and Aspose.Cells

The following table compares the Open XML SDK and Aspose.Cells features.

Feature or Feature Category	Open XML SDK	Aspose.Cells
Supported Excel or other formats	XLSX	XLS, CSV, SpreadsheetML 2003, XLSX, HTML, Tab Delimited, ODS, Plain Text (TXT), PDF, XPS
Convert between Excel formats	No	Yes
High-level programming with a workbook object model: - Find and replace. - Assemble spreadsheets. - Copy fragments and worksheets between workbooks.	No	Yes
Detailed programming with a document object model, access to individual elements and formatting properties of all spreadsheet elements.	Yes	Yes
Low-level direct and full access to the underlying XML elements and attributes such as relationship identifiers, list identifiers of an OOXML document.	Yes	No
Generate reports, populate documents with data: - Import/Export data to/from a DataTable / _ResultSet. - Smart Markers feature. - Insert/Delete Rows/Columns/Ranges. - Custom data sources.	No	Yes
Rendering and Printing:* Render worksheet pages to raster images (TIFF, multipage TIFF, PNG, JPEG, BMP).* Render spreadsheet pages to vector images (EMF). - Convert charts to images (TIFF, multipage TIFF, PNG, JPEG, BMP, EMF, etc.) - Specify image resolution, quality, compression, and other options. - Print spreadsheets using the .NET printing infrastructure. The component has a built-in print method to print the worksheets as shown in Print Preview of Microsoft Excel.	No	Yes
Calculate/ Recalculate formulas dynamically	No	Yes
Supported platforms	Windows, .NET	Windows, Linux, Java, .NET, Mono

You can compare OpenXML with Aspose.Cells To do these, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the Aspose.Cells for OpenXML project – it shows how different tasks can be done using the Aspose.Cells for .NET API versus OpenXML. The project also covers features for working with text documents that are only available in Aspose.Cells, but not in OpenXML.

This project is also useful for developers looking to migrate from OpenXML to Aspose.Cells.

Explore the plugin with source code examples of Aspose.Cells for .NET features in comparison with OpenXML.

This plugin uses the evaluation version of Aspose.Cells. When you are happy with your evaluation, you can purchase a license from the Aspose website. To remove the evaluation message and feature limitations, you must apply a product license. After purchasing the product, you will receive a license file. Please follow the instructions in the “Licensing and Subscription” article to do this.

Conclusion: Open XML SDK and Aspose.Cells do not compete head to head because they address quite different needs and audiences.

Why Not Open XML SDK

Open XML SDK is a class library to provide a strong-typed way to work with OOXML documents. Aspose.Cells is a very useful spreadsheet processing library that provides great support for all Microsoft Excel and other file formats.

If all you need to do is a fairly basic programming operation on an XLSX document, then Open XML SDK might be a suitable choice. With Open XML SDK, you will be fairly comfortable doing simple tasks like generating a simple XLSX document or removing comments, headers/footers, extracting images or others. Some tasks can be achieved with Open XML SDK, but cannot be achieved with Aspose.Cells. For example, if you need to directly access the XML elements and attributes of an OOXML document, then you should use Open XML SDK.

However, if you need to perform complex operations on documents, such as some of the following tasks, then using Aspose.Cells is your best option:

• Support other file formats in addition to XLSX.
• Copy fragments and worksheets between workbooks or join workbooks in a way that combines objects, styles and other formatting in an appropriate manner.
• Replace formatted or unformatted text.
• High-level functions, such as import data from different data sources including Array, ArrayList, DataTable / ResultSet.
• Generate a business document, such as an order with order details from a data source.
• Convert a document to PDF or XPS so it appears exactly like Microsoft Excel would have converted it.
• Develop a .NET or Java application.