mySQL and excel spreadsheet
 

I am attempting to put data from an excel spreadsheet into a mysql database. From what I have found searching, there is a LOAD function in mysql, and there is also software you can buy to do this. What is the best way to do this? Thanks.

if u just want to insert the data of the excel file into the db u best use a perl script. there's a module available for transforming excel data to xml.
http://search.cpan.org
-->XML::Excel
then u can insert the data in a mysql table. the data type for this sort of data would be text or some sort of blob depending on it's size.
are u familiar with perl and sql?
cheers, jens