Ask HN: Rate my Product : QueryCell

I've saved up 6 months worth of money and am taking time off to try and start a software company.

I have just released a new version of my app QueryCell and would love any feedback people have.

QueryCell is an add-in for Microsoft Excel that allows you to query Excel data using SQL, Generate SQL Insert statements, generate test data and mark rows.

http://www.querycell.com/ http://www.querycell.com/welcome.html (welcome is going to be the landing page for ads)

Thanks

Does QueryCell work when excel is being run on a non-windows OS via wine? ( I assume not, but if it does, I know more people who might be interested ).

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Also, the video cut off for me in mid-sentence. I think you are missing the end. For me, it ended at with "if you would like to try query cell for free, feel free to download".

There is a Perl DBD for this. It doesn't run in Excel, but you can run SQL queries on spreadsheet files.

@smicallef

Yes the idea of Microsoft proving a similar functionality is scary, but I feel a little bit like "if they were going to do it they would have done it", also they have access to protect. But maybe I am in for an unpleasant suprise, certainly a risk.

@tzury

Yes there is an interesting marketing proposition here in my opinion. I can either market to heavy Excel users who don't use SQL yet or market to SQL users who occasionally find themselves using Excel. It's an interesting one. At the moment I am leaning more towards SQL users, they can immediately see the possibilities. hmmm.

Power users aren't _that_ narrow a user base. There are an enormous number of data miners (analysts, integrators, etc.) out there who work in Excel because they must, or because they're used to it, or because that's the format that their data arrives in, or because it's a nice visual tool that allows them to easily inspect intermediate results---but who ultimately need to run reports across multiple large spreadsheets. SQL is astonishingly easy for such people, and I've watched dozens of data experts learn it from scratch (with help).

I'd beg you not to add wizards to your product, and instead focus on treating power users rather than being all things to all people. (Your syntax highlighting is good, and little red underlines on unparseable SQL would be good.) Trying to train users to use (or avoid using) SQL with wizards is a dangerous business for a piece of software to be in.

This looks incredibly useful. I'll check it out more thoroughly on Monday.