Bug 29992 - opening an excel workbook fails

Today I was given a task to load data from a MS Excel spreadsheet, which is quite complicated itself, containing multiple worksheets, some of them hidden, with data cells related one another and cell validations and cell comments.

I searched the web for a good Java API to access MS spreadsheet and of course found Jakarta POI. When I tried to load this file using POI, it failed spectacularly. Through some debugging, I found that the cause was an unknown record type 93. The bug has actually been reported to ASF Bugzilla but was closed because the reporter did not attach the spreadsheet in problem, probably because of some confidentiality issue.

I have been deleted data from the original spreadsheet and come to a very basic one that did not cause any problem. I'm trying to add things back to recreate the problem and reopen the bug and attach the spreadsheet with company secrets removed.

The URL of the bug:
Bug 29992 - opening a excel workbook fails

Wow, my very first BLOG!

Today is very special, cause it's my ever first attempt to create a real personal blog. What I mean is that I have tried it a few times when testing some applications and website, mostly internal to registered users, instead of being oriented to the public.

As the title says it, this blog is about my work using Java and related technologies, such as J2EE, Javascript, trialling IDEs, trialling test tools and writing SQL scripts.

At the moment, I'm working on a few things, which have already been keeping me busy:
1) Warming up my Swing skills as I need to write a Swing application for the very first time, instead of JApplets used for uni assignments.
2) Adopting Struts 1.2.7 to our website.
3) Using a (relatively) new technology called AJAX.

At the same time, I'm also doing my Master degree at the uni and currently doing a literature review on Recommender Systesm, such as those used by amazon.com and ebay.com.

Right-o, that's enough for today.