SQL Server can be read via ODBC once you have configured ODBC correctly to access it from your DataStage server. If you are on UNIX or want to have a consistent way to access Excel and have the Java pack you can use POI (http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/) to access the files directly.
Note that the ODBC driver for Excel regards worksheets as system tables. [:0] This means:
(a) you must check "system tables" when importing metadata
(b) the "table names" come in prefixed by "$"
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