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We currently have a good deal of usage information being tracked in a SQL Server 2008 database. However, it has been decided to not spend the time to develop any sort of UI to interface with this data in our current admin system, and rather just provide a link to an Excel document with the information from these tables.

The link would be displayed on an ASP.NET page.

I have googled around for a quick and easy way to do this -- this seems like the kind of thing that would already be taken care of. I find a million different articles on ten thousand different technologies related to this.

Given that I want to do this from code rather than by using SQL Server Management Studio or some other tool, what is the simplest/fastest way to offer up-to-date Excel spreadsheets to users generated from our SQL Server 2008 database?

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You can do this in SQL Server Management Studio. No C# required. Right-click on the database, ORIGIN: SQL Server database, DESTINATION: Excel and supply file path, write your query (or specify tables/views), and save as a SSIS package. You can then schedule the SSIS package to run on whatever schedule is needed. You can then expose the file or directory via a IIS vdir. Is there a reason that you need to do this from code given that you can set it up as a scheduled job?

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If it can be automated as a scheduled job, that would be acceptable but not perfect. You're right that it isn't a requirement that it be done in code, but the closer it is to a live report, the better. Still, I don't think a daily refresh would be too stale.
I'm a developer first and foremost. I'm not one to shy away from code. But you could have an export that would satisfy all or most of your requirements done as above in a few minutes. If you want a truly live report (which will be printed and carried around for hours), it's not too hard to do with ADO.NET and spat out to a CSV with the appropriate mime type, which will automatically be opened by Excel. Just ask yourself if there's something you'd rather be coding than a data dump. :)
I think you're right -- for time invested, this is going to be the best solution. The coding solutions give a very small gain (slightly fresher results) for a lot more pain (time invested in writing code and possibly learning a new API).

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