Excel to Excel using XML, really?

Abstract

Merging several Excel documents, from different sources with different forms, into a single XML document that has to satisfy externally specified reporting requirements is a somewhat daunting prospect. You might imagine that a tool like Python (and Pandas) would be the appropriate place to start. But we were able to develop a solution using the XML stack in less time than was forecast for the Python-based solution. We use a single XProc 3.0 pipeline to merge the Excel files and produce both the required XML format and Excel files for internal use. We believe our success depended largely on the fact that the project design enabled precise, filtered, early feedback which reduced the number of iterations required to create the critical deliverable. In addition to ingesting and providing final data in the user’s preferred format (Excel) we were able to provide intermediate files, change tracking, and process documents in Excel.