Thanks. I'm more comfortable with R, but I'm trying to wean Excel junkies off of Excel, and something like this (Python and SQL within Excel) seems like a good gateway drug. Sadly, RStudio is a bit too big of a leap for that.
What is the goal in trying to wean people off Excel?
Is it just to get them on an open source solution or is it to replicate the functionality of Excel in something you've written/control?
Business users already know how use Excel. Spreadsheets were the original killer app. They have transformed business and I'm not convinced we've moved beyond their usefulness. It's the same argument as trying to reinvent SQL syntax for the NoSQL flavor of the month. Why try to change what your users are already proficient at? Why not instead try to feed data to that software in a more seamless way?
I may have gone ot from what you meant, but I'm interested in what you meant by the "wean Excel junkies off Excel" comment.
Really, the goal is to use the right tool for the data analysis they're doing.
90% of the time, that's Excel; they're looking at reports that can easily be pivot tabled or VLOOKUP'd to get what they need, or use the strengths of the UI and auto-updating to get the formulas they want working in an easily tweakable fashion. For those cases, things like R, SQL or Python can be overkill, especially if you spend more time preparing the data format than it would take to use Excel, let alone analyze the data.
However, 10% of the time, they're pushing Excel beyond the limits of what it can handle and wasting time as a result, spending an hour doing massive VLOOKUPs between two huge spreadsheets looking for an answer that SQL can answer in a heartbeat. Those are the use cases I want to solve for; where the advantages of statistical software, scripting languages and relational databases overtake the powerful and convenient simplicity of Excel.
Agreed. Excel bashing often comes from web developers who lack real business experience in a gritty production environment.
Belittling Excel is an effective way to burnish one's programming credentials.
I know many languages (Flex, Html, PHP, JS, C# etc). Excel and VBA have their place, especially for very rapid app development.
Web apps are perfect for trapping data. However, output is best handled in Excel. The first thing people ask when getting a report is "How can I get this into Excel?". People like to play with their numbers.
