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I am proud I was one of the firsts to upvote and comment about ThingieQuery on HN, 604 days ago (if I remember well I was the first one, and my comment reflects

by fiatjaf 10y ago

I am proud I was one of the firsts to upvote and comment about ThingieQuery on HN, 604 days ago (if I remember well I was the first one, and my comment reflects that). I liked the other name better, but I understand the reasons for changing it. I am pretty happy it grew into a sustainable and profitable product. I'm curious about the use-cases this plugin has in enterprise companies. I've never worked in big companies that used Excel or whatever. What is the flow? Which kind of companies use this?

qiqitori 10y ago
I worked at a logistics company once where Excel was one of the main programs in use. It's used to pass around data, e.g., lists of shipments. The shipment programs and business intelligence programs give you Excel files when you press export. People then filter out the unneeded information, maybe highlight stuff, maybe make a PivotTable, add extra information from other Excel files or other sources, and submit it as a report. If you want to automate this, and you (the dev) cannot access the servers with the raw data either, you would normally write tedious VBA code. With SQL, it may get a bit more comfortable. (You can use SQL to query Excel sheets in VBA, but the boilerplate code for that is tedious too.) I'm not sure if my previous company would be a great fit, because the automated reports are usually run by the users themselves. Per-seat licenses would be very expensive.
anakic 10y ago
Hey, I remember your username from back then, thanks for the support!! Yeah, that was the first HN post I did. About use-cases: techy people use if for hacking away at data in Excel and import/export. Enterprises also seem to want the automation part. The main scenario there is to have IT folks prepare queries, embed them into the workbook and set up triggers. Business users or clients then just interact with the workbook, without caring about the SQL queries that are running in the background populating data. Nice for interactive reports, much faster than building web applications for the purpose. That said, I do need to start doing surveys as this are just my conclusions based on email exchanges with users.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  It's great to know I don't have to know all the dirty details behind enterprises to develop a useful and profitable product!
fiatjaf 10y ago
I forgot to paste the link to prove my bragging point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364598

by fiatjaf 10y ago

qiqitori 10y ago

I worked at a logistics company once where Excel was one of the main programs in use. It's used to pass around data, e.g., lists of shipments. The shipment programs and business intelligence programs give you Excel files when you press export. People then filter out the unneeded information, maybe highlight stuff, maybe make a PivotTable, add extra information from other Excel files or other sources, and submit it as a report. If you want to automate this, and you (the dev) cannot access the servers with the raw data either, you would normally write tedious VBA code. With SQL, it may get a bit more comfortable. (You can use SQL to query Excel sheets in VBA, but the boilerplate code for that is tedious too.) I'm not sure if my previous company would be a great fit, because the automated reports are usually run by the users themselves. Per-seat licenses would be very expensive.

anakic 10y ago

Hey, I remember your username from back then, thanks for the support!! Yeah, that was the first HN post I did. About use-cases: techy people use if for hacking away at data in Excel and import/export. Enterprises also seem to want the automation part. The main scenario there is to have IT folks prepare queries, embed them into the workbook and set up triggers. Business users or clients then just interact with the workbook, without caring about the SQL queries that are running in the background populating data. Nice for interactive reports, much faster than building web applications for the purpose. That said, I do need to start doing surveys as this are just my conclusions based on email exchanges with users.

fiatjaf 10y ago
It's great to know I don't have to know all the dirty details behind enterprises to develop a useful and profitable product!

fiatjaf 10y ago

I forgot to paste the link to prove my bragging point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364598