Spreadsheet::WriteExcel set_optimization() generates unlink errors - linux

Question

We have been using Spreadsheet::WriteExcel since a long time and this was working like a charm.
Few years ago we migrated to Excel-Writer-XLSX which uses 5 times more memory than WriteExcel as stated in the documentation.
Thanks to XLSX, users are now able to generate larger Excel files.
We started since few weeks to face memory usage issues where the about 84% of the server memory was needed.
The same documentation states that $workbook->set_optimization() should solve the problem. The given performance figures are promising.
We tried to use $workbook->set_optimization() on a sample file but this did not work. It generates an unlink error.
If set_optimization() is removed, the Excel file is generated properly.
The example is provided by the author in this thread :
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Excel::Writer::XLSX;
my $workbook = Excel::Writer::XLSX->new('test.xlsx');
$workbook->set_optimization();
my $worksheet = $workbook->add_worksheet();
my #header_values = ( 1, 2, 3, 'foo', 'bar', 6, 7 );
my $header_cnt = 0;
for my $header_cell (#header_values){
$worksheet->write(0, $header_cnt, $header_cell);
$header_cnt++;
}
$workbook->close();
Error unlinking file /opt/.../rKhGTRYWSJ using unlink0 at /usr/local/share/perl5/Excel/Writer/XLSX/Worksheet.pm line 204
(in cleanup) Error unlinking file /opt/.../iGr8Qo8VBD using unlink0 at /usr/local/share/perl5/Excel/Writer/XLSX/Worksheet.pm line 204
we are running:
Excel-Writer-XLSX 0.70
perl v5.10.1
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.8 (Santiago)
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Excel::Writer::XLSX is used to write large amount of data in XLSX and to handle large data and to reduce memory usage set_optimization() method is used.
In XLSX file, a workbook can have maximum of 10,48,576 rows and 16,384 columns can be created and if the rows count exceeds maximum limit a new sheet can be created in the same workbook and in such a way the large amount of data can be handled.
Refer "Write_largeData_XLSX.pl" from this link https://github.com/AarthiRT/Excel_Writer_XLSX for more details.