And this is just the tip of the iceberg for data importation. Managers and customer facing folks want to say Can't you just use off the shelf software for this

And this is just the tip of the iceberg for data importation. Managers and customer facing folks want to say Can't you just use off the shelf software for this? If your data importation needs are at all non-trivial, the problems tend to come in 2 categories. 1) Error reporting from off the shelf software is inadequate. If you are lucky, it will consistently point you to the correct row number. It's usually lacking any additional info. 2) If your application is at all non-trivial, you have specific importation needs, not easily covered by 3rd party generic solutions. For instance you want to import well formed tables with primary keys. Lots of solutions claim to handle this case, but you usually run into problems under category (1). A programmer can overcome these difficulties and muddle through 3rd party solutions, but you probably don't want to hand this over to users. It just won't be a good experience for them. I completed an importation library tailored for our specific needs and handling the real problems we have experience over many years. The front-end project to make this available to users started and stopped and changed hands over months. We are finally nearing deployment, and so far the users we have shown it to like it.