Reading from a data sheet using Java or C#

Question

I would consider myself an amateur programmer. I've taken Java classes and i'm in the process of self-teaching myself C#.
When it comes to Reading Data (say for example an Excel file) I've noticed a trend, It always begins with Open...ImportData/ManipulateData/ExportData....Export

My question:
Is there some other way to read data other than the "OpenStream" "CloseStream" that I know of already?
I know that there are a ton of different languages out there, but maybe a built in function that I don't know of already for Java or C#?

Answer 1

I/O operations are essentially streaming operations. Your main logic stored and executed inside the memory. After that you can dump the result, temporary calculations or the application state down to the disk. The traditional way to achive this is using streams (filestream, networkstream...) because the data is layed down one after another. Usually these streams are not random access streams, thats why there is easy to work with them.

In C# if you dont want to open or close disposable objects manually you can use the using statement.