>Does Excel care what you put in a cell? Does it object when you get a resultset from SQL server that is different than before?
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>Yes, it actually does care. As a matter of fact, it might object, depending on the nature of the change. Excel might generate an error, or the Excel content (pivot table/pivot chart) might "blank out".
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>Because of this, sheets that use pivot tables bound to OLAP cubes or database views will sometimes have macros to self-refresh, because of back-end changes. So, just like many things, "it depends"

What you describe is something different than having to type columns and cells by hand. And this is the whole point of the discussion. Users and programmers should never have to type data just to keep the compiler (or tool) happy. It should be smart enough to deal with the uncertainty.