python xlwings update a speadsheet

I am researching how to approach a new assignment. What I want to have is a three tier system: database for storage, database procedures and functions as the middle tier and finally excel for presentation. I saw this done several years ago using PERL and Win32:OLE.

I would have excel spreadsheets that are templates where all the pretty formatting is done and there may be formulas contained in the spreadsheets. The next step is to open these spreadsheets using Python and perform to operations: find all the names (named ranges) and examine them. Does the range/name contain a value? Are there comments attached to the cell etc... Read these comments, they could contain queries to be run.

Next step will be to run queries against the database based on the info picked up above. Then populate ranges with the spreadsheet with results returned.

Then Saves the spreadsheet under a new name.

The simple question is can xlwings do this? Most important, will the formatting and formulas be retained?

Thanks for your kind attention to the matter.

KBD