As much as I hate to admit it, it is going to be a long time before we get rid of spreadsheets in de facto production use. And for that, I really would like to see one thing: I'd like to have a separate worksheet type for "datasheets". Looks and behaves just like an ordinary worksheet, but: - plugging in a formula applies the formula on every cell of the column. No exceptions. - you can not have different data types…
I think you're on to a good idea, but it has to be a table in the middle of a spreadsheet if you want to get acceptance. What would probably cinch it for you is if you could embed an entire table in a bounded box, with scrolling. It would break the row/column addressing for the contents, but that's always clumsy with tables in sheets anyway.
Example: a data table lives in C10-M10 / C20/M20
Down in C21-M21 you could have sums, counts, etc. that work across all the data.
With this arraignment, you could then sum columns, count, etc. It would be really slick if you snuck in SQL. The tradeoff in immediate addressing of cells within a table could be acceptable.
A while ago, I saw something that allowed spreadsheets in spreadsheet cells, it was mostly intended for interactive use, and dispensed with cell addresses completely in a manner that seemed reasonable at the time.