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Archive for the ‘VBA’ Category

Excel as a document-oriented NoSQL database

Posted in ETL, Python, SQLite, VBA, data, excel, xLite, tagged , , on March 2, 2010 | Leave a 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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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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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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Python to replace VB6 …

Posted in ETL, Python, VBA, excel, xLite, tagged , , on May 5, 2008 | 2 Comments »

… well at least for me. As I discussed previously I’ve been seriously investigating using Python as my primary datasmithing scripting language, in effect a new VBA. I also currently use VBA’s compiled cousin, VB6, for certain tasks such as building Excel RTD servers. The problem with VB6 is it depends on [...]

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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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xlAWS – Excel VBA Code for accessing Amazon’s S3 and SimpleDB

Posted in AmazonAWS, S3, SimpleDB, VBA, excel, programming, tagged , , on February 22, 2008 | 4 Comments »

I’ve been using Amazon’s S3 service from within Excel for sometime now and as there are no libraries or examples for calling AWS services from VBA (or VB6) I had to roll my own. As with most things Excel, getting the job done always triumphs over elegance and industrial strength implementations, in other words [...]

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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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JavaScript as an Excel scripting language via ExcelDNA

Posted in JavaScript, VBA, excel, tagged , , , , , , on October 4, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Developing .NET DLLs that are to be used within an Excel VBA add-in is relatively easy to do. But the overhead of the COM managed interfaces can be a serious performance bottleneck if the .NET managed functions are called from within a tight loop. The alternative is to create a C++ XLL and [...]

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Proto – desktop BI tool.

Posted in ETL, Proto, RSSBus, VBA, news, xLite on September 9, 2007 | 1 Comment »

I see that Proto have repositioned their excellent VBA scripted mash-up product as a “desktop business intelligence system”. This is to be welcomed as the first time I used it I described it as a “mash-up tool for adults” and although it has the ability to play hard ball with the other Web2.0 mash-up [...]

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Google Spreadsheets – ETL tool

Posted in BI, ETL, GoogleApps, RSSBus, Ruby, SQLite, Talend, VBA, Web2.0, excel, kettle, tagged on September 6, 2007 | 1 Comment »

Although I’m a total Excel fanboy, I most admit I rarely use it any longer for personal stuff such as home budgets, tax calculations, what-ifs, to-do lists etc.; I now tend to use Google Spreadsheets. Likewise, personal notes, drafts and useful bits of code are stored using Google Docs rather than MS Word. [...]

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In Memory OLAP

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, SQLite, VBA, data, excel, olap, xLite on September 5, 2007 | 9 Comments »

The consolidation within the BI market continues, this time with the purchase of Applix by Cognos. As Timo Elliott points out, the interesting bit is the Applix TM1 memory-centric OLAP product. For the vast majority of OLAP users (i.e. the millions of Excel Pivot table jockeys) in-memory OLAP is nothing new, but traditionally [...]

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SQLite Star Query Part II

Posted in BI, ETL, Palo, SQLite, VBA, excel, olap, xLite on August 31, 2007 | 1 Comment »

In my previous post I looked at simulating a bitmap-join in SQLite using a sub-query and the INTERSECT command. The problem is of course, this is a simulation, SQLite lacks bitmap indices and although the sub-query will read only the fact table’s index B-trees (avoiding accessing the fact table proper) and should be [...]

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Like Excel macros? You’ll love this..

Posted in ETL, GoogleApps, Ruby, VBA, excel on July 17, 2007 | 7 Comments »

One of the most used (and abused) features of Excel is its macro recording facility. How many mundane and repetitive actions have been automated using this feature? How many people found the courage to program in VBA by using the recorder as their training-wheels? Well now iMacros (from German company iOpus [...]

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dhSQLite – now with FTS2 and VB UDFs

Posted in ETL, SQLite, VBA, data on June 29, 2007 | 2 Comments »

Datenhaus has just released a new version of dhSQLite based on the latest SQLite 2.4.0 3.4.0 engine which according to www.sqlite.org…
…fixes two separate bugs either of which can lead to database corruption. Upgrading is strongly recommended…
This version of dhSQLite has the FTS2 module compiled in, which adds full-text indexing to SQLite. Version 1.2 also [...]

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dhSQLite – New SQLite COM Wrapper

Posted in SQLite, VBA, excel on June 1, 2007 | 17 Comments »

I’ve just come across a new COM wrapper for SQLite from German company Datenhaus (like the name, maybe I should call myself Datenschmidt?). I’ve started to use the COM free PSSQLITE.DLL in my Excel VBA projects but I may consider using the Datenhaus dhSQLite library in certain situations as it includes a database encryption [...]

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JavaFX – a GUI DSL

Posted in ETL, Java, JavaFX, JavaScript, Ruby, SQLite, Talend, VBA, excel, programming on May 19, 2007 | 4 Comments »

Having mastered JavaScript (OK master is too strong a word – having become comfortable with both its syntax and usage patterns) my next port of call is JavaFX the recently announced Flash/Silverlight competitor. What led me to JavaFX Script was not its role in this Flash/AJAX alternative platform (which unless  Sun improves [...]

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