read xls file - mac program

I have a 开发者_运维百科little question, I'm a beginner of mac application, I try to do a little program for mac, a program that read some data from a database file (xls) I would ask you where is the best way for parsing an xls file, than I would ask you what is the best format for read (and write) a database file (sqlite,xls,csv,ecc....).

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.xls file is in a proprietary binary format, and you need a tremendous amount of work to parse it, and I can't recommend it for a beginning programmer. If possible, just start from the newer .xlsx file, which is a zip file containing an XML file, see e.g. Office Open XML.

Saving to a CSV file would be an easiest solution for the time being, while you learn your way through programming on a Mac. Later you can learn how to use sqlite or, if you're happy with working with Cocoa only technology, how to use the awesome CoreData framework.