There is a particular test Excel file which we have unit tests for, which isn't working in POI 3.0.1 or 3.0.2 (although it's working in our custom 3.0.1 branch, I can't figure out why.)

The file itself is complicated but I have managed to 
Simple test exhibiting the problem:

    public void testEscher() throws Exception
    {
        byte[] data = FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(new File("D:\\temp\\container.dat"));
        EscherContainerRecord record = new EscherContainerRecord();
        record.fillFields(data, 0, new DefaultEscherRecordFactory());
    }

This throws:

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
	at org.apache.poi.ddf.UnknownEscherRecord.fillFields(UnknownEscherRecord.java:76)
	at org.apache.poi.ddf.EscherContainerRecord.fillFields(EscherContainerRecord.java:56)
	at org.apache.poi.ddf.EscherContainerRecord.fillFields(EscherContainerRecord.java:56)


I tracked it down to an EscherMetafileBlip underneath EscherBSERecord.  EscherBSERecord is assuming that getRecordSize() will be consistent with its own bytesRemaining value and this is not the case -- there are supposed to be 1125 bytes after the header but field_5_cbSave is only 163.

But from there I can't say whether it's a trivial fix or not.  The code in our real unit test asserts an MD5 for the uncompressed metafile -- if I rewrite EscherMetafileBlip to read the whole thing then it avoids the exception but the MD5 still fails.  Problem is, I don't know whether the MD5 was wrong the whole time, due to some other obscure bug.

Someone who knows more about EscherMetafileBlip would probably be able to say whether the simple and obvious fix is applicable here.