This is a pretty fast Excel Add-In because its written VC++. Nice features
too.

www.rubiconplus.net

Regards
Ranjit

Any features that make this one stand out over the others in the market?

"Ranj" <rsjohREMOVE (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

I've tested it.
In my opinion it is rather pure in comparision to concurents.

Regards,
kamel
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Kamel,

What do you mean by "pure"?

Regards,

John


"kamel" <kawa (AT) panda (DOT) bg.univ.gda.pl> wrote

my mistake!

pur (not pure)

Kamel
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John,

I was wondering if he meant 'poor' when he said 'pur'? If so, presumably he
doesn't like it.

Incidentally, I wonder if you agree with me that it's hard to build a good
Excel add-in, and no-one seems to get it right first time? Some go on to do
a good job (ie, functional, reliable, fast and easy to use) by a second or
third release, but most never get there.

Regards

Nigel


"John Keeley" <duvinrouge (AT) servihoo (DOT) com> wrote

Kamel,

I think I'll wait until someone tells me it's a good product before I
spend time looking at it.

Nigel is quite right that it's hard to build a good Excel add-in first
time around.

XLCubed, whilst giving us a good add-in for disjoint reporting, found
that their ad-hoc analysis was inadequate.
They have now corrected this with the Explorer add-in.
So they currently have two additional menus appearing in Excel; one
focusing on ad-hoc analysis using grids, the other for formula-based
reports/views.
They tell me they will merge the two menus back into one when they
have upgraded the formula-based side of things.

Regards,

John

"kamel" <kawa (AT) panda (DOT) bg.univ.gda.pl> wrote

Nigel,
I would agree with the statement that writing good Excel Add-ins for
Analysis Services is hard. In one form or another I have been involved
in doing this for the last 4 years. My personal view is this, and I
will probably get shot down in flames for saying it .. but hey why not
...

Building software is to a large extent about understanding the need
and that is the hardest part .. whether it is a specific application
or a tool.. what does the program need to do and then the
designer/architect/programmer (depends on the project budget as to the
title) sees the problem a certain way and builds something which does
the job as they see it. This can be good/bad or indifferent and in my
view is more about the vision of the authors then the underlying
software.

Computers are built to repeatedly do the same thing in the same way
every time and fortunately, or not, human beings are NOT .. depending
upon your view we either have evolved this way or were created such ..

The capacity for individuals to do things differently and use tools in
totally obscure ways in all walks of life is what makes life
interesting ..

Excel is an extraordinarily flexible tool and is used by millions of
people daily in all kinds of ways. Analysis Services can manage vast
quantities of data and is bringing (too slowly in terms of take up in
my view) OLAP to the masses so that they can manage their businesses
better .. at least thats the theory.

So when you start to build tools based upon Excel and Analysis
Services for use by those non logical human beings the possibilities
are endless. Many IT people rubbish Excel as a non serious tool and
fail to understand just what users are able to do with there
spreadsheets today.

Consequently Many Excel Add-ins try to control the environment within
Excel too much – my own view is this is what pivot tables
themselves do – or the designers/architects/ authors just dont
understand how users use Excel and end up with something which looks
like Excel but does not feel like Excel.

Then you have all the technical issues. As I said Excel is an
extraordinarily flexible tool and it does things differently than one
might expect in differing circumstances and end users expect to be
able to use it and see comparable behaviour to their current
experiences with Excel.

Understanding how it works under the covers and how to get the best
performance is non trivial at best and downright frustrating at worst.
This changes between versions and in the real world people still use
Excel 97 a lot. Getting the product to be pretty stable takes time, a
lot of testing, rigor and a lot more testing and some tough trade
off's. MDX is not like SQL and providing a user interface which end
users can understand, preferably hiding them from the potential
complexity, is not simple.

The goal of all the Excel Add-in vendors is to build something which
feels like Excel, works fast and is intuitively simple and to make
some money too.

I think that there are some good excel add-ins, not just mine
(remember I am a vendor so no I am not going to be drawn on which are
goo ones download them and take a look, it won't take long). Read
Nigel's report on Olapreport.com as to what to look for. But believe
me I know how much effort we have put in over the last year to produce
our new version and it has not been easy.

The 80/20 rule applies here BIG TIME. To get a simple add-in written
in VBA or even C++ and up into the public domain or as part of a
bespoke app is relatively simple. To turn it into a mission critical
piece of software for large corporates that really meets 90 to 99% of
most users needs for business intelligence is a lot of work and will
remain a work in progress for those of us who survive the commercial
realities of the marketplace.

The KISS maxim of "Keep it Simple Stupid" is really easy to say and
really hard to achieve in this area and is one area where many of the
add-in vendors fail to concentrate. We all suffer from the need to be
feature rich when we should be user friendly first.

Excel Add-ins should be easy enough for the average end user to pick
up and run with and sophisticated enough for consultants to build
complex applications with. When you dont control the back end and the
front end that is a tough nut to crack and one which requires a lot of
lateral thinking.

The really good thing about Excel Add-ins, from an end users
perspective (not a vendors), is that they are cheap and that they can
be compared easily against each other and there is now more and more
coverage about them.

From just 1 year ago when we launched XLCubed to an unsuspecting world
we have seen a change in perception from customers, consultants and
there is consequently more interest - so we must all be doing
something right!

Personally, I think that they compare well for most organisations
against the cognos/business objects/proclarity etc etc for what people
want to do in the real world on a daily basis on a feature comparison.
If you start to look at price as well then they compare really well.
Ask yourself why people want to export to Excel from these tools - is
it because they like creating work for themselves ..

I think (I hope, as it will have been too much hard work to get to
this point and not see the benefit) that we will see this niche grow
as more people become exposed to there capabilities and I hope that
the Excel Add-in vendors will continue to get better at delivering
what the end user wants ..


Anyway that's my reasons for why its hard and hence why I have not
hung, drawn and quartered my development team because we are only now
shipping our first part of XLCubed version 2 now rather than 2 months
ago as planned.

Mark Scanlon
XLCubed



"Nigel Pendse" <nigelp.nospam (AT) compuserve (DOT) com> wrote