Datawatch builds reports using SpreadsheetML

Datawatch just announced the availability of Monarch V.9.0 which has the ability to output rich spreadsheet reports on data leveraging SpreadsheetML: https://www.datawatch.com/datawatch/news.asp?display=detail&id=128

This is pretty cool because they take advantage of the 300 pages of spreadsheet function documentation in the OpenXML standard to help create super rich reports. They don't just output the raw data, but also provide rollups leveraging spreadsheet functions.

Here's a list of some of the benefits they get with SpreadsheetML as identified on their website:

• Enhanced Exporting to Excel – The Monarch V9 new Excel exporting engine runs up to 5X faster than previous versions.
• Summary Export to Excel – Formulas, outlining and conditional formatting have been implemented for summary export to Excel.
• Open XML Spreadsheet Support – Monarch V9 can export Excel 2007 OpenXML spreadsheets (xlsx), allowing users to take full advantage of the new functionality and dramatically increased spreadsheet capacity of Excel 2007.
• Summary Sub-totals and Grand Totals Export to Excel as Formulas – Monarch V9 now exports the values and formulas, allowing users to make revisions to Excel files without worrying about sub-total/grand total errors.
• Excel Autofilter – Users have the option to automatically invoke the Excel AutoFilter when they open an exported file in Excel.

I'm expecting we'll see more and more data providers leveraging SpreadsheetML to provide much richer reporting than was possible before (and with much less overhead). Rather than doing the calculations themselves, they can just specify the function and the consuming spreadsheet application will perform the calculation. This is also true for things like charts and pivot tables. We've definitely come a long way from the basic CSV file J

-Brian

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 27, 2007
  "dramatically increased spreadsheet capacity"?  How does one increase spreadsheet capacity? Come on, if you're blogging, you could at least not copy out press releases verbatim but translate them from marketing-speak to English.

• Anonymous
  February 27, 2007
  Excel 2007 significantly increased the limits of what you can do in a spreadsheet. Here's the list (taken from Dave Gainer's blog http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/09/26/474258.aspx): The total number of available columns in ExcelOld Limit: 256  (2^8)New Limit: 16k  (2^14)The total number of available rows in ExcelOld Limit: 64k  (2^16)New Limit: 1M  (2^20)Total amount of PC memory that Excel can use Old Limit: 1GBNew Limit: Maximum allowed by WindowsNumber of unique colours allowed a single workbookOld Limit: 56 (indexed colour)New Limit: 4.3 billion (32-bit colour)Number of conditional format conditions on a cellOld Limit: 3 conditionsNew Limit: Limited by available memoryNumber of levels of sorting on a range or tableOld Limit: 3New Limit: 64Number of items shown in the Auto-Filter dropdownOld Limit: 1,000New Limit: 10,000The total number of characters that can display in a cellOld Limit: 1k (when the text is formatted)New Limit: 32k or as many as will fit in the cell (regardless of formatting)The number of characters per cell that Excel can printOld Limit: 1kNew Limit: 32kThe total number of unique cell styles in a workbook (combinations of all cell formatting)Old Limit: 4000New Limit: 64kThe maximum length of formulas (in characters)Old Limit: 1k charactersNew Limit: 8k charactersThe number of levels of nesting that Excel allows in formulasOld Limit: 7New Limit: 64Maximum number of arguments to a functionOld Limit: 30New Limit: 255Maximum number of items found by “Find All”Old Limit: ~64k (65472)New Limit: ~2 BillionNumber of rows allowed in a Pivot TableOld Limit: 64kNew Limit: 1MNumber of columns allowed in a Pivot TableOld Limit: 255New Limit: 16kMaximum number of unique items within a single Pivot FieldOld Limit: 32kNew Limit: 1MLength of the MDX name for a Pivot Table item; also the string length for a relational Pivot TableOld Limit: 255 charactersNew Limit: 32kThe length at which fields’ labels are truncated when added to PivotTable; this also includes caption length limitationsOld Limit: 255New Limit: 32kThe number of fields (as seen in the field list) that a single PivotTable can haveOld Limit: 255New Limit: 16kThe number of cells that may depend on a single area before Excel must do full calculations instead of partial calculations (because it can no longer track the dependencies required to do partial calculations)Old Limit: 8kNew Limit: Limited by available memoryThe number of different areas in a sheet that may have dependencies before Excel must do full calculations instead of partial calculations (because it can no longer track the dependencies required to do partial calculations)Old Limit: 64kNew Limit: Limited by available memoryThe number of array formulas in a worksheet that can refer to another (given) worksheetOld Limit: 65kNew Limit: Limited by available memoryThe number of categories that custom functions can be bucketed intoOld Limit: 32New Limit: 255The number of characters that may be updated in a non-resident external workbook referenceOld Limit: 255New Limit: 32kNumber of rows of a column or columns that can be referred to in an array formulaOld Limit: 65,335New Limit: Limitation removed (full-column references allowed)The number of characters that can be stored and displayed in a cell formatted as TextOld Limit: 255New Limit: 32k

• Anonymous
  February 27, 2007
  One Open XML implementation that I find interesting for a variety of reasons is the new release of Monarch

• Anonymous
  February 27, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 02, 2007
  The comment has been removed