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I really like this guy's tenacity and clever use of excel. But from my experience you can use excel files as an ODBC database source (Windows). https://stackov

I really like this guy's tenacity and clever use of excel. But from my experience you can use excel files as an ODBC database source (Windows). https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15844633/using-excel-as-an-odbc-database https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15844633/using-excel-as-... Once you create your ODBC source from the excel files, you can run queries and use the language of your choice (Python,C# ....). I am pretty sure you can also insert/update rows and columns too. Wondering how this differs from the approach I describe (which has existed for many years). Good work!

the-dude 9y ago
See the Dropbox HN argument. Polish.
- thisisandyok 9y ago
  Infamous Dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - levimaes 9y ago
    Holy hell, that's Drew Houston!
  - zerr 9y ago
    To be honest - dropbox is still burning investors money, right? AFAIK they are not profitable even today.
    - drgath 9y ago
      They’re about to IPO. Doesn’t mean they’re profitable, but it does mean their finances are healthy enough that they can be publicly traded.
      - TomV1971 9y ago
        They already IPO’d. :-)
- hitekker 9y ago
  Excellent shorthand.
- jxub 9y ago
  It would be even better if BrandonM also commented here ;)
  - zerr 9y ago
    Not OP, but even today I still don't understand why is Dropbox different except for hype and media coverage - there were many similar services back then (including integrating as a virtual drive on Windows) and we have literally tons of these services now.
    - the-dude 9y ago
      > there were many similar services back then Citations please.
      - thisisandyok 9y ago
        I read a quote of Drew's a while back that stuck with me. Just googled and found it: "When Dropbox was getting off the ground in 2007, there were hundreds of small storage companies. It was almost a cliche, the way that many people believe mobile photo sharing is a cliche now, he says. “The important thing was, I would keep asking people if they used any one of these hundred options, and they all said no. These are my favorite problems to solve. You can’t focus on what everyone else is doing — it has to be about what’s really broken and what you can do to fix it.”" http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Win-as-a-First-Time-Founder-a-Drew-Houston-Manifesto/ http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Win-as-a-First-Time-Foun...
        zerr 9y ago
        He should've said what he did differently - seamless integration (aka virtual drive in Windows) was a selling point, but again, other services also had this.
      - zerr 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchronization_software#Commercial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchroniza... You can find when each of these companies were founded by following the links... Don't remember the name, but I remember similar service even in late 90s, when dial-up was popular. You'd pay for some amount of storage hosted on their servers (no "cloud" term back then) and they had Windows client integrated as a drive. Not sure if they had "freemium", maybe dropbox differentiated with this business model.
- fastball 9y ago
  Oh god. I was so confused by your comment because this guy is on a Polish accelerator and I was trying to figure out how that was relevant.
  - the-dude 9y ago
    I noticed directly after posting, decided to keep it.
    - kirubakaran 9y ago
      No pun in ten did get upvotes though.
anakic 9y ago
Primarily, it's a lot more convenient. There's no setup involved, you just click and and the data is available through SQL or C#. There's no need to clean the data around the tables, it works on live data (file does not need to be saved), no connection strings to set up or boilerplate code to write. There's more, e.g. the SQLite engine can interact with Excel and fiddle with formatting, but I think the major thing is convenience. As a dev, most times I just wouldn't bother with the ODBC approach unless I really had to. Convenient C# and SQL though, I'd use them at least 10x more often.
- foobarchu 9y ago
  Are you ever worried about Microsoft a feature that acts similar in a future version of Excel? It's a problem that has bit others before (Firebug, Growl, tabbed-browsing extensions for IE).
  - TuringTest 9y ago
    Isn't it similar to PowerPivot?
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I wouldn't be. The energy is in O365 at the moment, isn't it? VBA is the big programming environment at the moment and it's basically VB6 and hasn't been touched in a long time. There's also that JavaScript thing, which I think is still pretty half-baked.
    - chatmasta 9y ago
      The JavaScript office API looks like a good solution for integrating your UI within the app. It’s still quite limited in terms of heavier capabilities, eg data processing etc. That’s probably because right now MS is focused more on a shared plugin API for all office products than on deep integration of any one specific product.
  - gnud 9y ago
    I don't think Microsoft would be able to produce something that was just ready, without having to create a project or click through a wizard first. Much of this functionality is available already, through ODBC, powershell, c# - but it's cumbersome to use. That's the selling point of this software, it seems to me.

the-dude 9y ago

See the Dropbox HN argument. Polish.

thisisandyok 9y ago
Infamous Dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- levimaes 9y ago
  Holy hell, that's Drew Houston!
- zerr 9y ago
  To be honest - dropbox is still burning investors money, right? AFAIK they are not profitable even today.
  - drgath 9y ago
    They’re about to IPO. Doesn’t mean they’re profitable, but it does mean their finances are healthy enough that they can be publicly traded.
    - TomV1971 9y ago
      They already IPO’d. :-)
hitekker 9y ago
Excellent shorthand.
jxub 9y ago
It would be even better if BrandonM also commented here ;)
- zerr 9y ago
  Not OP, but even today I still don't understand why is Dropbox different except for hype and media coverage - there were many similar services back then (including integrating as a virtual drive on Windows) and we have literally tons of these services now.
  - the-dude 9y ago
    > there were many similar services back then Citations please.
    - thisisandyok 9y ago
      I read a quote of Drew's a while back that stuck with me. Just googled and found it: "When Dropbox was getting off the ground in 2007, there were hundreds of small storage companies. It was almost a cliche, the way that many people believe mobile photo sharing is a cliche now, he says. “The important thing was, I would keep asking people if they used any one of these hundred options, and they all said no. These are my favorite problems to solve. You can’t focus on what everyone else is doing — it has to be about what’s really broken and what you can do to fix it.”" http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Win-as-a-First-Time-Founder-a-Drew-Houston-Manifesto/ http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Win-as-a-First-Time-Foun...
      - zerr 9y ago
        He should've said what he did differently - seamless integration (aka virtual drive in Windows) was a selling point, but again, other services also had this.
    - zerr 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchronization_software#Commercial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchroniza... You can find when each of these companies were founded by following the links... Don't remember the name, but I remember similar service even in late 90s, when dial-up was popular. You'd pay for some amount of storage hosted on their servers (no "cloud" term back then) and they had Windows client integrated as a drive. Not sure if they had "freemium", maybe dropbox differentiated with this business model.
fastball 9y ago
Oh god. I was so confused by your comment because this guy is on a Polish accelerator and I was trying to figure out how that was relevant.
- the-dude 9y ago
  I noticed directly after posting, decided to keep it.
  - kirubakaran 9y ago
    No pun in ten did get upvotes though.

anakic 9y ago

Primarily, it's a lot more convenient. There's no setup involved, you just click and and the data is available through SQL or C#. There's no need to clean the data around the tables, it works on live data (file does not need to be saved), no connection strings to set up or boilerplate code to write. There's more, e.g. the SQLite engine can interact with Excel and fiddle with formatting, but I think the major thing is convenience. As a dev, most times I just wouldn't bother with the ODBC approach unless I really had to. Convenient C# and SQL though, I'd use them at least 10x more often.

foobarchu 9y ago
Are you ever worried about Microsoft a feature that acts similar in a future version of Excel? It's a problem that has bit others before (Firebug, Growl, tabbed-browsing extensions for IE).
- TuringTest 9y ago
  Isn't it similar to PowerPivot?
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I wouldn't be. The energy is in O365 at the moment, isn't it? VBA is the big programming environment at the moment and it's basically VB6 and hasn't been touched in a long time. There's also that JavaScript thing, which I think is still pretty half-baked.
  - chatmasta 9y ago
    The JavaScript office API looks like a good solution for integrating your UI within the app. It’s still quite limited in terms of heavier capabilities, eg data processing etc. That’s probably because right now MS is focused more on a shared plugin API for all office products than on deep integration of any one specific product.
- gnud 9y ago
  I don't think Microsoft would be able to produce something that was just ready, without having to create a project or click through a wizard first. Much of this functionality is available already, through ODBC, powershell, c# - but it's cumbersome to use. That's the selling point of this software, it seems to me.