News just in, the lasted version of Excel DNA (0.27) has been released by Govert, and can be had here.
From the site:
Release Notes
This release adds support for the .NET Framework version 4: add a RuntimeVersion=”v4.0″ attribute to the DnaLibrary tag to load the .NET 4 runtime.Additional changes:
- XML-based hierarchical CommandBars updated (thanks to Bertrand).
- Shadow copy support: add ShadowCopyFiles=”true” to the DnaLibrary tag.
This might inspire a change to C#!
I was there!
What a great day, it was brilliant to meet so many famous faces of the Excel world, I really enjoyed myself.
My talk on Excel DNA went Ok, apart from one small technical issue, which we managed to gloss over I think! (pack:= “True”, say no more!).
All the talks were good, and I learnt a lot of new stuff, Charles’ series of discussions on developing a commercial addin were a real eye opener, it’s great that we can share this insight. Simon on RTD functions was made all the better for the presences of two chaps from Bloomingdales Bloomberg (they really knew their stuff!). And Rogers talk on slicers and filters was insightful.
The venue was cool, not too big, not too small, tea and coffee on tap, I’d like to thank (Dr) Mike (Staunton), for provision of biscuits, well done Mike, and the irrepressible Bob Phillips for his words of wisdom!
We are aiming to do something similar next year, so start working on your boss now! And next year, I’ll organise the T-shirts!!!
I wanted to buy a Blackberry for work, my company don’t provide me with one, preferring smoke signals instead ;-). Obviously I didn’t want to pay top dollar for it so it was off to eBay in search of a bargain. I noticed there was a large spread of prices for the same phone, which lead me to wonder if I could research the sold prices for various items.
It turns out that you can’t via eBay, but some other company does provide an API (with a free option) which can be used to search the sold prices. Long story short here is a file that you can use to get the prices. You’ll need to get a developers key first though, at:
https://developer.ebay.com/join/Default.aspx
Mine took a day to come through….
“User Guide…”
Get your AppID key and paste it in the “eBay developers App ID” box, then type something in the keyword box, then pick a currency then and parent category, then a child one. Click search!. If you can’t find anything in this category, try a slightly different set of keywords, of check the “search all” box, to search the all the listings.
The “update category data” link under the child category drop down updates the data in the category dropdowns as eBay change them form time to time.
Note on quality….
Over all I’m a bit disappointed by the whole thing. As I’ve thought about it, while writing the app, it’s dawned on me that it’s quite a tricky thing to do. You see the problem is, eBay gets hammered by people selling links to things, or multiply items, or broken things, or replicas, or mis-listings (something listed as “Oakley sunglass, but when you read the detail it says there not actually Oakley’s but they look like them etc), so getting a true average price is actually quite hard… I’m not sure I trust the results. As the API does not return a list of all the items that go into the average price you can’t eye ball the data. But it’s better than nothing I guess.
Download the workbook here:
The great thing about the internet is that anyone can share their thoughts, the problem with the internet is that anyone can share there thoughts. A classic dichotomy if you will.
We see this all the time, people talking utter, utter rubbish about things they don’t understand. As “organisations” have started to blog more and more this issue has increased. The way I see it is like this… If you run “Mega Corps” would you want me bloging for you? I probably wouldn’t. You see I’m not a talented writer, my spelling and grammar are poor and I’m not adept at making my point – as I will now prove. So “Mega Crops” ask the people who can do these things well to blog for them. What actually makes for a good bloger is someone who can think well! See, a bad idea expressed well is still a bad idea. What makes a great bloger is someone who can think and write well – and these types are rare. But still, what would you rather have, an ill-conceived observation expressed elegantly or a quality observation just expressed?
Which leads me to these two blog post, the first one suggests that people who use Excel in the supply chain are doomed, and the second one adds more fuel to that fire.
Beware Supply Chain Excel Users—YOU are DOOMED!!!!
Excel doesn’t excel in all cases…
Now I need to be careful here, I don’t what to offend anyone.
Equally I’d like to address the lack of understanding and insight, or at least offer a counter view. I have some grounds to make these observations, being somewhat familiar with Excel and having worked in supply chain for the last decade or so.
Basically both articles point out the limitations of Excel, principally by comparing the differences between Excel and a Generic ERP system. For example:
“Excel has features that can calculate safety stock by using prebuilt basic formulas such as moving average, standard deviations forecasts etc. Keep in mind that by doing this, an organization will not have the ability to see the entire supply and demand relationship. On the other hand, when the same safety stock is calculated within an application, it will provide visibility to outstanding supplies that need to be replenished; orders can be planned for production; and it can calculate how quickly organizations can turn a forecast into a deliverable product.”
Khudsiya Quadri, Technology Evaluation Centers
And
“I completely agree with the author that there is a big risk to SCM Professionals who rely too heavily on Excel. There are all the reasons listed in the article such as lack of collaboration, visibility, control and no ability to perform “what-if” scenarios. I would like to add some additional thoughts to this discussion.”
Monique Rupert, 21st Century Supply Chains
So, Excel has limitations creating what if scenarios, and pre built basic functions!! Clearly not Excel experts! Another common theme is that Excel is not very good for collaboration, information sharing and data security…
It is almost impossible to control the integrity of spreadsheet data and access to the spreadsheet. With multiple people accessing the spreadsheet and no security, how can anyone have any confidence in the data?
Monique Rupert, 21st Century Supply Chains
Well true. Sharepoint (etc.) might help here, but that’s another issue. So basically don’t use Excel as a database. Fair enough but…
Comparing Excel to an ERP system is like comparing a Motor Bike to a Train Network. It’s just stupid. Telling people not to use Excel because it does not have the same capabilities as an ERP system is likewise really bad advice. Excel is different to an ERP system, we could easily re frame the argument the other way around and draw the conclusion that ERP system are the work of the Devil!
In fact, lets do just that.
Beware Supply Chain ERP Users—YOU are DOOMED!!!!
ERP systems are slow expensive complex beasts, with poorly documented calculation methods, inflexible font ends, and limited reporting capabilities. I recently talked to a number of supply chain professional and was shocked by how many of them are using their ERP systems in blind faith that the system are optimised for their needs. In the fast passed global supply chains of today, how can these default settings and calculation models possibly be right for your business?
Consider yourself doomed if you ever find yourself using an ERP system for any of these:
Reporting and Analysis: ERP system can out put reports in a number of formats, but typically they cant build well constructed dashboards, which are tailored to your companies specific needs, and/or ones that can be quickly adapted and changed over time as the needs of the business change. And forget it if you want to do some sort of analysis that the System Architect didn’t think you’d need to do in the 2 month he was specifying the system for your company 3 years ago. (Not that that would ever happen of course…).
Changing the model: ERP systems provide various forecasting tools, is getting the best results from them a skill or a science? Do you even know what equations are being used, it’s unlikely because this is the IP of the vendor, and what about data sources, is that data from the Spanish plant accurate, if it’s not can you do anything about it? Not all that flexible are we!
Your team just grew: Better get your wallet out…
You want someone form out side the organising to use the system: No.
You have a new data source that you’d like to add to the model: Humm, can you see where we’re going…
And so on…
In conclusion neither ERP systems or Excel can doom your supply chain and comparing one against the other as a way to high light a weakness is a logical flaw. Neither ERP systems or Excel are inherently good or bad, badly designed and/or used spreadsheets are a business risk, just like a poor quality ERP system or ones that are used poorly are a risk. Each “system” has strengths and areas where their use makes sense, and this are extremely well document. Likewise the “miss use” of Excel and the motivations for this are also well document, and note – not all of them are unreasonable.
I take exception to the two blog posts because as well as misrepresent the capabilities of Excel, they also give poor or misleading reasons as to why it’s use is dangerous, also they both take one or two valid, but already extremely well understood points, and extrapolate them to reach irrational end points.
So were doe this leave us?
Well, here are some of my thoughts on what you should do to help you avoid risks if your using spread sheets (for anything really)
And there ended the rant ;-).
In my last post, VBA Version 7 Daniel, author of Daniel’s XL Toolbox, commented that he had not come across anything untoward with the “new!” version of VBA, and reported, so far, all is well with his addin – good news! Then JP from Code For Excel & Outlook, pointed to a VBA Compatibility tool (tool, info) from MS – thanks JP, I think this is called team work! ;-)
Anyway, I believe the major update might be support of 64 bit types in VBA? I’m not running a 64 bit OS to test, but I found this:
Excel 2010 can load much larger workbooks. Excel 2010 made updates to use 64-bit memory addressing in order to move beyond the 2-GB addressable memory boundary that limits 32-bit applications.
The down side of this is:
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) VBA code that uses the Declare statement to access the Windows application programming interface (API) or other DLL entry points will see differences between 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The Declare statement must be updated with the PtrSafe attribute after inputs and outputs to the API have been reviewed and updated. Declare statements will not work in 64-bit VBA without the PtrSafe attribute. New data types are added to 64-bit Office 2010 VBA: LongLong and LongPtr. For more information about VBA, see the “64-bit VBA Overview” and “Declare Statement” articles in the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications online Help in Office applications.
So if your using API calls in you VBA, and you hit a 64 bit versions, you could be about to hit some issue. Doesn’t sound like the fix will be to hard though, but we’ll wait and see eh!
Bonus thought: Does this mean the C API has been updated too?