Create an Excel File in background

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have a requirement to create an Excel file in a program that will only be executed in background mode. This automatically rules out GUI_DOWNLOAD or any download funtion that presents the file on the presentation server.

I think that the 'Open Dataset...' command will work to create the file on the Application server, but this seems a bit archaic to me. Is there another way of creating the excel file on the application server in background? I am working on a 4.7 system at the moment, but this is scheduled for a upgrade to ECC6 sometime in the next 12 months, so I'm after a process that will be valid both before and after the upgrade.

Cheers,

Steve