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Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

rows.com

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Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#31
post #27

The real power of this product is as a replacement of BI/Visualization tools. Imagine being able to connect Rows to a database and create "governed" sheets that look/work like dashboards with charts, tables, filters, etc. It would be a killer product because most users are familiar with spreadsheets already. Many users end-up copying data from dashboards into spreadsheets (gsheet, excel, etc) so why not skipping the…

What prevents anyone from doing this in Excel/Google sheets? I've been doing Excel-based BI dashboards for 15 years, connecting to all kinds of backends. Excels have tables/charts/filters/buttons/pivots

[deleted]

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#32

Compliments to see this thrive since 2016 with that large of a team! I had to laugh at the Berlin (ex) Rocket company logos; this age old Excel style data formatting which looks nice and custom at first glance brings back memories of inevitably ending up in swamps of versions, custom tweaks and data inaccuracies. Arguably, most of these problems can be well mitigated by a cloud hosted solution like yours! But the aud…

Wow, thanks for pointing out the founding date. I'd heard of Rows only recently and thought they launched this year.

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#33

The real power of this product is as a replacement of BI/Visualization tools. Imagine being able to connect Rows to a database and create "governed" sheets that look/work like dashboards with charts, tables, filters, etc. It would be a killer product because most users are familiar with spreadsheets already. Many users end-up copying data from dashboards into spreadsheets (gsheet, excel, etc) so why not skipping the…

Its done already http://nocodb.com/ This is fully open source

An error occurred on client - that's all I see. Either it's adblock or my outdated browser, but, in any case, it's a no go.

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#34

If you haven't looked into it yet - Google Apps Script [0] is an incredibly powerful system when combined with Google Sheets. You can integrate lots of business processes and external systems (rest,soap,databases etc) together and integrate with classic spreadsheet functionality, we use it a lot in our business! [0] https://developers.google.com/apps-script

Yeah, I had a similar idea to Rows, but decided it'd be better to add what's missing to Sheets vs. build an entirely separate app. Wax (https://www.wax.run/) helps you build internal tools on top of Google Sheets. It's built using Apps Script and handles a ton of the boilerplate you'd want for any internal tool. Scheduling and integrations are hard to do in Apps Script, so we handle that and considering a lot of internal tools leverage SQL and Python we make using those them from Sheets simple.

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#35
This is the tech that may be the future of computing. All of your company's data stored, and handled, in Rows.

Or not. The chief concern is that modern data protection laws would make all columns of these tables unreadable without specific sanction. You're not free to address any cell in any table, just a pre-cleared strict subset, which no longer allows you to take advantage of easy aggregation and filtering of data.

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#36

The real power of this product is as a replacement of BI/Visualization tools. Imagine being able to connect Rows to a database and create "governed" sheets that look/work like dashboards with charts, tables, filters, etc. It would be a killer product because most users are familiar with spreadsheets already. Many users end-up copying data from dashboards into spreadsheets (gsheet, excel, etc) so why not skipping the…

Its done already http://nocodb.com/ This is fully open source

Any idea when they will have a decent implementation of forms (and maybe even subforms) with customized layouts? Last I checked it was ~on the road map.

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#37
post #27

The real power of this product is as a replacement of BI/Visualization tools. Imagine being able to connect Rows to a database and create "governed" sheets that look/work like dashboards with charts, tables, filters, etc. It would be a killer product because most users are familiar with spreadsheets already. Many users end-up copying data from dashboards into spreadsheets (gsheet, excel, etc) so why not skipping the…

What prevents anyone from doing this in Excel/Google sheets? I've been doing Excel-based BI dashboards for 15 years, connecting to all kinds of backends. Excels have tables/charts/filters/buttons/pivots

Yes, Sheets is amazing already. It is missing integrations out of the box though which is where Rows is trying to win. I notice this problem a while back and built Wax (https://www.wax.run/). Wax adds the features you'd want from Rows to Sheets. We handle integrations and scheduling. Also, considering a lot of internal tools leverage SQL and Python, we make using those them from Sheets simple.

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#38

If you haven't looked into it yet - Google Apps Script [0] is an incredibly powerful system when combined with Google Sheets. You can integrate lots of business processes and external systems (rest,soap,databases etc) together and integrate with classic spreadsheet functionality, we use it a lot in our business! [0] https://developers.google.com/apps-script

I've been working with this for a while and I find it frustrating slow and unreliable. Especially working with an HTTP listener. Does anyone have better experience/advice?

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right now it is 20k rows and 104 cols (so ~2M cells). But that's changing soon to 5-10M.

20k rows to 10M rows or 2M cells to 10M cells?

in the next quarter or so, to 5-10M cells

Re: Rows.com – Spreadsheet that supports external API integration and collaboration

#40
post #26

curious how much startup funding went into the domain acquisition? Or was it already owned? (Also curious for you.com which is on the HN top page)

the domain was ~$100k

we wrote the story, project, prices of the rebrand in our blog if you're curious

https://blog.rows.com/p/why-how-rebrand

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