Comments on: xlAWS – Excel VBA Code for accessing Amazon’s S3 and SimpleDB

By: Bob Riemersma

Bob Riemersma — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:05:44 +0000

Just a note: I recently imported my VB6 HS256 class into Excel to be sure and it worked there with no changes. The HS1 class should be just as clean. Thus in case it isn’t clear, this does provide a VBA implementation. This was only tested by me using Excel 2003 (11) VBA 6.5.

By: gobansaor

gobansaor — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:59:38 +0000

Not really familiar with Classic ASP, but VBA and VBScript are very similar (I regularly use VBScript example code I’ve found on the web in VBA modules), Therefore the S3 code to be found in the code above and in my Excel microETL add-in should work in ASP.

By: Astralis

Astralis — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:37:27 +0000

Tom,

Thanks for replying. I’ve been thinking of storing my data (SQL Server) onto S3 to spare some memory from my own server.

I use Classic ASP and would love to connect it. Any advice? Have you ever found a simply application with Classic ASP that uses S3?

By: gobansaor

gobansaor — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:22:50 +0000

What gave you the impression I don’t use S3 any more? I, and my clients, use it every day! I don’t use SimpleDB, but that’s because its use-case is as a back-end database to a Web App (such as ASP) but I mainly deal with client-side “detached” datasets, hence my preference for SQLite/CSV/JSON transported via S3.

Tom

By: Astralis

Astralis — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 01:54:14 +0000

Why aren’t you using S3 anymore?
I’ve been thinking about using it with classic ASP.

By: gobansaor

gobansaor — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:26:50 +0000

Thanks Bob,

I’ve updated the post to reflect this.

Tom

By: Bob Riemersma

Bob Riemersma — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 02:06:58 +0000

In case anyone is interested a slight update to the VB6 HMAC-SHA-256 code plus a conversion to HMAC-SHA-1 (with RFC 2202 Test Vectors for validation) is now available at http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=635398

By: S3 as an Excel hub | Gobán Saor

S3 as an Excel hub | Gobán Saor — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:11:30 +0000

[...] In my Steam Powered PowerPivot post I explained the concept of powered-spoke based Excel systems. One of the hub options was Amazon’s Simple Storage Service, S3. I’ve been using S3 both as a simple backup service and as a “systems hub” since the service began in 2006. Back then, it was not necessarily the easiest to use or the most suitable, but it was cheap and reliable. The code I used to access S3 from Excel can be found here http://blog.gobansaor.com/2008/02/22/xlaws-excel-vba-code-for-accessing-amazons-s3-and-simpledb/ [...]

By: gobansaor

gobansaor — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:49:39 +0000

Bob,

Sorry I obviously missed this, but better late than never. I don’t have a VB6 version of this, but the essence should be the same. The SimpleDB code will no longer work in VBA or VB6 however as it was coded using a now discontinued signing method (security problems it seems), needs to use Signature Version 2.

Also see the many alternatives for n0n-DLL HMAC-SHA1 hash calculations.

Tom

By: Steam Powered PowerPivot | Gobán Saor

Steam Powered PowerPivot | Gobán Saor — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:19:41 +0000

[...] Orchestrating the processing of files on S3 is very simple using tools such as Python’s Boto (another good reason for having Python in-built in microETL). For the client-side, pure VBA could be used, see my xlAWS code. [...]