Member Avatar for ewelinac

Hello.
Is there a way to import data (numbers) in to a Java program which will do analysis on the data?
Thanks!
Evelina

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Quick summary for (and followup to ): there are two practical approaches depending on complexity and fidelity required. For simple numeric tables a delimited-text parser (CSV) is the fastest route. For reading native Excel files (.xls and .xlsx) and preserving types, formulas and dates, use a library such as Apache POI. See Apache POI for Java-based Excel handling and OpenCSV for robust CSV parsing: Apache POI , .

Typical workflow with Apache POI: open the workbook with WorkbookFactory, iterate rows, and use a FormulaEvaluator to get a stable numeric value (handles formulas and cached values). The snippet below shows the pattern to extract numeric cell values safely.

try (FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("data.xlsx");
     Workbook wb = WorkbookFactory.create(fis)) {
  Sheet sheet = wb.getSheetAt(0);
  FormulaEvaluator eval = wb.getCreationHelper().createFormulaEvaluator();
  for (Row row : sheet) {
    Cell cell = row.getCell(0);
    CellValue cv = eval.evaluate(cell);
    if (cv != null && cv.getCellType() == CellType.NUMERIC) {
      double v = cv.getNumberValue();
      // collect v for analysis
    }
  }
}

Troubleshooting tips: watch for numbers stored as text (trim and parse), Excel dates (Excel stores them as numeric—use POI DateUtil), locale decimal/thousand separators when importing CSV, and memory with very large spreadsheets (use POI's SAX/streaming API for XLSX). Modern Java no longer relies on the old JDBC-ODBC bridge; prefer file-based libraries above registering Excel as an OS data source.

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Member Avatar for Jocamps

yes there is! firstly, you need to know how the data is stored in the file (ie., structure, data types etc). Then you can read the file through a java program and do your data analysis.

Member Avatar for ewelinac

Do I have to set up the excel file as a data source on my computer like I would do to a database?

Member Avatar for Jocamps

Not entirely sure what you meant by "data source" but you need to save your excel file where you know what the data structure, I normally save it as a CSV (comma delimited) coz its easier to read this way and extract my data.
Example you have a table that looks like this in excel:
Age Name year of Birth
20 someone 1985
18 someone1 1988
....(and so on)

If you save this to a CSV file (File > Save as > Save as Type > CSV)
the data in your *.csv file would look like this:

Age,Name,year of Birth
20,someone,1985
18,someone1,1988

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