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Eve Version 0

chris-granger.com

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Re: Eve Version 0

#181

Post by kasrak »

mistermann wrote: post #170
kasrak wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work here, so disclaimer, etc, but we're working on a modern MS Access at Airtable [1] -- it's very similar to DabbleDB. It's early days both for Eve and for us, but it kinda feels like we're approaching the same problem from different angles. Eve's more focused on the programming experience while we're starting by focusing on the data. [1] http://airtable.com

This looks quite interesting. Do you have plans for a pricing model to support building a public website on top of it? Also, will it only be (your) cloud based?

We're still figuring out pricing, but each base ("database") has a custom API (the endpoints correspond to your specific schema) that you can use to build a website: http://airtable.com/api

Re: Eve Version 0

#182

Post by knn »

rgoddard wrote: post #84
jamii wrote: post #50

The change of focus is perhaps hard to understand without more context. Basically, there are two really different modes of programming: Most of what we see on HN is about building applications, servers, websites etc. Big, monolithic things that take weeks to years and are deployed to somewhere else and used by lots of people. Most programming tools are built for this kind of work, where the time between writing the c…

I am currently working as an Actuarial Analyst, but I have also worked several years as a programmer. As an analyst the tools I use are excel, access, SAS Enterprise guide and Oracle SQL developer. One of the big problems I face is that we have no good way to abstract away a process and really make it reusable. My general work flow is using SAS to pull data from multiple sources, combine and run the data through some…

The databricks platform should solve exactly your problem - reusable data pipelining/transformation. I saw a demo of it last night and it was extremely slick. Their product is amazing, it makes data pipelining incredibly easy compared to setting up a hadoop cluster and running hive/etc. (I don't work for them - but if any databricks employee sees this, please hire me!) It runs on a spark cluster over AWS, which is much more modern and powerful than SAS/excel/sql. Since you know how to program already, it shouldn't be too hard to pick up spark (even has python bindings)

Re: Eve Version 0

#183

Post by chilicuil »

The quick instructions didn't look really quick to me, so I created a vagrant setup for those who don't want to install TypeScript, Rust Nightly, and multirust in its local machines.

$ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/chilicuil/eve-vagrant && cd eve-vagrant

$ vagrant up #this may take a while

$ xdg-open http://localhost:8080/editor

The above uses a plain precise 32 box and install eve and its dependencies in the provisioning phase, I've also created a modified box (583MB) with eve dependencies hard-coded, which could serve better those who don't have precise32.box anyway.

$ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/chilicuil/eve-vagrant && cd eve-vagrant/partial

$ vagrant up #this may take a while but not as much as the above

$ xdg-open http://localhost:8080/editor ```

Re: Eve Version 0

#184

Post by tycho01 »

mistermann wrote: post #166
dgudkov wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at my EasyMorph ( http://easymorph.com ). It's a visual replacement for scripted data transformations. People use it to replace SAS and Visual Basic scripting. It also allows creating reusable modules. Contact me at @easymorph.com if it looks interesting to you.

Does this have an API that can be called from .Net? I'm really liking some of the things Microsoft is doing with Power Query, but I don't like how it is (afaik) only callable from Excel or PowerBI online. I'd like similar capability, but more open, and could be called via scripting, from SQLCLR, etc. Another big hitch: Microsoft has not published proper API's for manipulating PowerPivot models in Excel, and I don't t…

Would you perhaps have any info/reference about where I could learn more about this reverse engineered PowerPivot API? This sounds pretty exciting. :D

To expand on my question, I'd heard (from Rob 'PowerPivotPro' Collie, former product manager on the project IIRC) that the core had been written in 'unmanaged code' (probably C++?), so I believe reverse engineering it would be a significantly larger effort than just opening some of its DLLs in say DotPeek, at least from as far as I've been able to tell.

Re: Eve Version 0

#185

Post by tycho01 »

mistermann wrote: post #169
JBiserkov wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by state and UI, but Excel definitely has a join-like functionality in the form of vlookup function. https://support.office.com/en-in/article/VLOOKUP-function-0b...

Now try doing a VLookup using more than one column. Artificial limitations like this are one reason people rightfully hate Microsoft.

The so-so way: use MATCH in one column to get the row numbers, INDEX in one column for each column you want to pull in to actually grab them using that row number. Alternative: join the tables using Power Query so you could have it refresh and give you the combined version even after adding more columns.

I mean, point taken, but in case you were wondering, then yeah. VBA also does SQL operations on Excel tables, but that's, well, worse.

Re: Eve Version 0

#186

Post by tycho01 »

viraptor wrote: post #144

> Imagine what we could do just with a version of office where every bit of information was sourced live from a database, where instead of Power Point presentations of status you could throw together a dashboard and send it to everyone in the organization. The thing is... you can. Not a presentation / PP, but if you want to create a self-updating dashboard, you can do it in Excel. It's not going to be super easy, but…

In fact, Power Views stored on SharePoint can be embedded into PowerPoint from my understanding. ... which unfortunately complicates things, but yeah.

Re: Eve Version 0

#187

Post by mistermann »

tycho01 wrote: post #185
mistermann wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now try doing a VLookup using more than one column. Artificial limitations like this are one reason people rightfully hate Microsoft.

The so-so way: use MATCH in one column to get the row numbers, INDEX in one column for each column you want to pull in to actually grab them using that row number. Alternative: join the tables using Power Query so you could have it refresh and give you the combined version even after adding more columns. I mean, point taken, but in case you were wondering, then yeah. VBA also does SQL operations on Excel tables, but…

> VBA also does SQL operations on Excel tables, but that's, well, worse.

Are you sure about that? Afaik it doesn't but I may be mistaken.

Re: Eve Version 0

#188

Post by mistermann »

tycho01 wrote: post #184
mistermann wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this have an API that can be called from .Net? I'm really liking some of the things Microsoft is doing with Power Query, but I don't like how it is (afaik) only callable from Excel or PowerBI online. I'd like similar capability, but more open, and could be called via scripting, from SQLCLR, etc. Another big hitch: Microsoft has not published proper API's for manipulating PowerPivot models in Excel, and I don't t…

Would you perhaps have any info/reference about where I could learn more about this reverse engineered PowerPivot API? This sounds pretty exciting. :D To expand on my question, I'd heard (from Rob 'PowerPivotPro' Collie, former product manager on the project IIRC) that the core had been written in 'unmanaged code' (probably C++?), so I believe reverse engineering it would be a significantly larger effort than just op…

The PowerPivot engine itself I imagine is in unmanaged code, but the code that just writes datasets and whatnot to the model is (from what I've heard)managed code, and indeed you can decmpile the libraries and see all sorts of things, I've only looked around for about 10 minutes or so. And I had just read on some obscure thread that someone had successfully found the undocumented API call to write to the model, which is what I'm wanting to do - but I don't even know what the product name is that supposedly does this, sorry.

Re: Eve Version 0

#189

Post by tycho01 »

mistermann wrote: post #188
tycho01 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you perhaps have any info/reference about where I could learn more about this reverse engineered PowerPivot API? This sounds pretty exciting. :D To expand on my question, I'd heard (from Rob 'PowerPivotPro' Collie, former product manager on the project IIRC) that the core had been written in 'unmanaged code' (probably C++?), so I believe reverse engineering it would be a significantly larger effort than just op…

The PowerPivot engine itself I imagine is in unmanaged code, but the code that just writes datasets and whatnot to the model is (from what I've heard)managed code, and indeed you can decmpile the libraries and see all sorts of things, I've only looked around for about 10 minutes or so. And I had just read on some obscure thread that someone had successfully found the undocumented API call to write to the model, which…

Right, makes sense, I'll try and check out what's available then. :)

By writing to the model, you mean programmatically adding new measures or the like?

My interest is in programmatically querying models using DAX, though to this end I'd also look to look in the direction of Microsoft's DirectQuery mode in SQL Server which supposedly did DAX-to-SQL conversion.

If one could use such a conversion plus MDX to start querying models on an Apache Spark cluster through pivot table/chart interfaces...

Re: Eve Version 0

#190

Post by tycho01 »

mistermann wrote: post #187
tycho01 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The so-so way: use MATCH in one column to get the row numbers, INDEX in one column for each column you want to pull in to actually grab them using that row number. Alternative: join the tables using Power Query so you could have it refresh and give you the combined version even after adding more columns. I mean, point taken, but in case you were wondering, then yeah. VBA also does SQL operations on Excel tables, but…

> VBA also does SQL operations on Excel tables, but that's, well, worse. Are you sure about that? Afaik it doesn't but I may be mistaken.

Yeah, it could be done using the ADODB interface on data in the workbook itself rather than from some actual DB. See this link for an example: http://stackoverflow.com/a/26678696/1502035 That being said, when I encountered someone doing this I was pretty surprised as well.
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