Spreadsheet Programming: MS Excel as Component Development Environment
Spreadsheet programming is an emerging technique for building complex business logic in MS Excel at a fraction of the effort, cost, and cycle time of hand coding such logic in a programming language. Programmers can deploy the business logic built in the spreadsheet into interactive client applications and highly scalable server applications.
by Mike Smialek
April 23, 2003
preadsheet programming is a natural evolution of component-oriented development. Its basic philosophy is to use MS Excel as a development environment for creating business logic components. These components can then be orchestrated to create vastly complex and sophisticated business processing systems that are still easy to manage and maintain. Furthermore, because the business rules are developed in Excel, business users—who typically drive system requirements—can easily review, verify, and even modify them.
Keep in mind that Excel is used only as a development environment. At runtime, spreadsheet engines can execute the business components without Excel, allowing for a high degree of scalability. Several vendors offer products that enable this technique on Java and .NET.
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preadsheet programming is a natural evolution of component-oriented development. Its basic philosophy is to use MS Excel as a development environment for creating business logic components. These components can then be orchestrated to create vastly complex and sophisticated business processing systems that are still easy to manage and maintain. Furthermore, because the business rules are developed in Excel, business users—who typically drive system requirements—can easily review, verify, and even modify them.
