Assume you're using 6.1 or 7.x ColdFusion.
If so, don't even screw around with ODBC. Lot's of minor
issues but the major issue you have with ODBC is you won't get more
than 255 characters from a column without some kung fu.
Go to www.hxtt.com and use their type 4 JDBC driver for Excel
which is contained in a single .jar file. It's the only type 4 I
know of.
Place that in /cfusionmx/runtime/servers/lib.
HXTT just went through an Excel driver beta that I
participated in -due to an internal project -and we found a few
issues and they were fixed.
Here's a typical URL to open up .xls files on the root of the
C: drive using the HXTT driver.
URL:
jdbc:excel:///c:/?FirstRowHasNames=true;versionNumber=BIFF8
Driver Class: com.hxtt.sql.excel.ExcelDriver
Each sheet (name) is a "table" name.
The HXTT driver handles unicode, etc without any problems.
They also have a very good Microsoft Access driver (type 4)
that I've validated internally here with our MS Access test suite.
This doesn't mean "official" support per-se but it is a good
driver and buys you JDBC stability for only ~$200, I think.
Stephen Dupre
Adobe Systems, Inc.