My understanding is that those products convert the XL workbook/sheet into a web-compatible "application." Think of it as a souped-up version of Colo's HTML Maker. Or, maybe, Google's online spreadsheet.
I imagine that for those who must make their XL apps "web friendly" these types of programs play an useful role.
At the same time, since they are converters, it leads to several obvious questions. And, I don't pretend to know the answers.
How well do they mimic the XL environment? For example, can they handle references to the contents of other worksheets? Workbooks? How well do they handle named ranges, named formulas?
Do they support MS-supplied addins such as the ATP or Solver? Do they handle UDFs? Other types of macros? Event procedures?
Also, several XL functions have long-standing "issues" with them, some by design, others by accident. How do these converter apps handle them? Do they mimic the problem?
MS has introduced differences in functionality with different versions of XL. For example, several stats functions were changed in 2002 and 2003. How do the converter programs handle this?
Again, this is not meant to criticize the converter type programs. The above is a non-exhaustive list of some of the concerns that I have had when evaluating such programs in the past and would have if I were to evaluate one in the future.
would the products i mentioned side step the issue of using xl on the server tusharm?