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Archive for the ‘SQLite’ Category

Excel as a document-oriented NoSQL database

Posted in ETL, Python, SQLite, VBA, data, excel, xLite, tagged , , on March 2, 2010 | 1 Comment »

I’ve been a long time fan of CouchDB, one of the many NoSQL databases to appear in the last few years. CouchDB is a document-oriented database, which with solid B-tree indexing and easy replication, topped off by a MapReduce style view mechanism, puts it up there as a best-of-breed noSQL datastore.
Now it may seem strange that [...]

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Excel 2010 Application.Caller Bug

Posted in ETL, SQLite, VBA, excel, xLite, tagged , , on February 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I’ve just released another xLite “introduction”, this time the xLiteWorkbookFunction function. I’ve had most of the now released functionality working (and in use) for quite a while but had delayed publishing until I’d installed Excel 2010 as I’d wished to test against a modern Excel version.
I’d not bothered with Excel 2007, as I couldn’t see the [...]

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TAG Cubes – SQLite Star Query Part III

Posted in ETL, Palo, SQLite, VBA, excel, olap, xLite, tagged , , on September 29, 2009 | 9 Comments »

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of SQLite and Excel, particularly when used in combination. I also greatly admire the open source BI engines, Palo and Mondrian. Mondrian appeals because of its “ROLAP with a cache” architecture and its implementation of MS’s excellent MDX language. When I say MDX is excellent I’m talking with my [...]

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Palo HTTP API via Excel/VBA

Posted in Palo, SQLite, VBA, tagged on June 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

As a result of a request on the Palo support forum last week looking for a VBA tool to directly access the Palo OLAP server via its native HTTP API, I realised I had such a tool. I had built it about a year ago (to use alongside Fiddler Web Debugger and .NET Reflector) to help me understand [...]

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Project Gemini – XXL, Excel on Steroids

Posted in BI, ETL, SQLite, excel, tagged , , , on April 1, 2009 | 9 Comments »

In my last post about why I use SQLite in combination with Excel for datasmithing tasks, I listed the more traditional backends (Excel itself, MS Access, RDBMs & MOLAP cubes) that one would expect to “compete” with such an idea.   But I suspect that if that same post appeared  two years or so into [...]

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SQLite as the MP3 of data

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, SQLite, VBA, excel, olap, tagged on March 14, 2009 | 18 Comments »

… and Excel as its “mixing desk”.
When I tell people that I use SQLite in combination with Excel (via xLite) as my datasmithing platform, many ask why SQLite? (Many others ask why Excel?  but “sin scéal eile”, that’s another discussion – Excel as the iPod of Downloaded Data.) Those that question my use of SQLite [...]

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SQL – does exactly what it says on the tin

Posted in AmazonAWS, ETL, SQLite, data, excel, tagged , , on December 18, 2008 | 10 Comments »

SQL how unloved it must feel sometimes, constantly being maligned, accused of being on the wrong side of the object-relational impedance mismatch,  lacking the glamour of OO programming languages that claim the moral high ground. Yet at the same time hewing and hauling most of the world’s structured data on its old but well fashioned [...]

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Spending time on Excel-SQLite, C, VBA Callbacks & Twitter

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, SQLite, VBA, Web2.0, excel, xLite, tagged , on November 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »

Haven’t posted here in a while as my spare time has been soaked up programing, well actually refactoring would be more exact.  My xLite “SQLite empowered Excel” codebase has grown over the years and required a serious makeover to get rid of stuff I no longer use and to generally make it more robust.  I [...]

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Why Larry hates the cloud, and my data trinity.

Posted in AmazonAWS, ETL, Palo, SQLite, cloud, excel, olap, tagged , on October 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Last week Oracle certified Amazon EC2 as a supported platform, that same week Larry Elison attacked the concept of cloud computing as pure hype. Obviously, Larry is not happy with this whole cloud thing, and I think it’s not just the threat it poses to the software industry’s traditional licensing model that worries him, rather, as Robert X. Cringely [...]

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Talend + SQLite + Groovy the new Oracle …

Posted in BI, EC2, ETL, Groovy, Palo, SQLite, Talend, data, excel, olap, tagged , on August 2, 2008 | 5 Comments »

… well, at least for me.  Let me explain.
For most of my datasmithing career, I’ve had access to corporate Oracle databases and now with the availability of  Oracle10g  Express I can even run my own Oracle instances at home or on EC2.  The combination of a powerful SQL engine, expressive scripting language (PL/SQL) ,OS independence, [...]

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New universal SQLite JDBC library.

Posted in ETL, Java, SQLite, Talend, kettle, news, tagged , , on July 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Both Talend (Java) and Kettle distribute the Zentus.com pure-Java SQLite JDBC driver and for most purposes this run-anywhere version is fine. But, if you really need to take advantage of SQLite’s speed then connecting using the native JNI version is a must.  Doing this was easy enough, just change over to using a generic JDBC [...]

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Groovy as Talend’s scripting language

Posted in ETL, Groovy, Java, Palo, SQLite, Talend, data, tagged , on July 20, 2008 | 6 Comments »

Although I had decided to use Talend (Java version) as my primary ETL tool I still had one major problem with it, its lack of a scripting tool.  Kettle (Pentaho PDI) has Javascript, Excel has VBA, Picalo has (well OK, is) Python and Talend in its Perl version has Perl.  I could have gone (and [...]

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Palo ETL Server – Not for me …

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, SQLite, excel, tagged , on May 1, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Jedox have just released V1.0 of their Palo-centric ETL Server. I had been looking forward to this, not so much for its ETL ability (which is somewhat limited when compared to the likes of Pentaho PDI or Talend) but for the drill-through capability it would add to Palo. Alas, there’s a catch, you [...]

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SQLite – the ultimate data-smithing tool!

Posted in AmazonAWS, ETL, SQLite, Talend, data, excel, kettle, tagged , on April 26, 2008 | 8 Comments »

Image via Wikipedia
Although my data-smithing tool box is full to the brim with powerful tools such as Talend, Kettle PDI, Picalo and Excel, all backed by the cloud infrastructure of Amazon’s S3, SImpleDB and EC2, there’s one simple yet powerful tool that I always seem to gravitate back to, that tool is SQLite.
Now obviously being [...]

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Python the new VBA ?

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, Python, Ruby, SQLite, VBA, Web2.0, data, excel, news, tagged , , , , on April 11, 2008 | 11 Comments »

These last two weeks, Python has been on my mind. First off, last week I decided to make time to fully investigate Picalo, an open-source Python-based data analysis tool, and then, this week, Google announced their long awaited cloud-computing offering, Google Apps Engine, with the language at its core.
Python was the first of [...]

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xlAWS – 100,000 downloads?

Posted in AmazonAWS, Proto, S3, SQLite, SimpleDB, VBA, programming, xLite, xlAWS, tagged , on April 2, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Not sure, but this morning I received my monthly AWS bill, and it was double its usual amount! When I investigated the extra cost it was due to 133GBs of downloads from my www2.gobansaor.com bucket. This is the S3 bucket in which I store the xlAWS zip file, xlAWS being a “library-of-sorts” of [...]

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Postgres Plus Cloud Edition is boring …

Posted in AmazonAWS, BI, EC2, ETL, S3, SQLite, SimpleDB, olap, tagged , , , on March 27, 2008 | 2 Comments »

… and that’s good. That’s how I like my databases, boring, reliable, consistent, easy to use.
SimpleDB on the other hand is not boring, it’s an exciting new shiny thing that opens up a myriad of new possibilities; but first, I and the rest of the developer community, need to tool up and cast aside [...]

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Dublin Bus and PALO ETL – the connection!

Posted in AmazonAWS, BI, ETL, Palo, S3, SQLite, SimpleDB, Talend, VBA, excel, kettle, olap, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2008 | 5 Comments »

Dublin buses, as is the norm with most road-based public transport systems in our increasingly car-choked cities, tend to operate on the basis of “no sign of a bus for ages, then two or three arrive at the same time”. Palo MOLAP ETL options appear to be following the same pattern; we’ve been waiting for [...]

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SimpleDB + S3 = distributed document-centric database

Posted in AmazonAWS, EC2, S3, SQLite, SimpleDB, Web2.0, data, excel, news, tagged , on December 14, 2007 | 3 Comments »

I’m a database man. I’ve worked on or about most variations on the theme, from roll-your-own flat files, to hierarchical, to CODASYL network databases, to the current crop of relational and MOLAP platforms. Of late, I’ve being investigating what I think will be the future of database technology, the distributed document-centric database. [...]

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Firefox tune up time again …..

Posted in EC2, Firefox, S3, SQLite, Web2.0, tagged , , , , , on December 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment »

This morning Firefox just got slower and slower; clicking on a link or a text box took ages to respond; using online WYSIWYG editors became next to impossible; I was also getting an error when attempting to connect to Google Sync.
I checked the usual suspects; internet connection OK; did a quick HijackThis scan and analysis [...]

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