[vox-tech] collaborative data storage (of excel files)

[Harold Lee]

Now that I want to find it ... d'oh

There were three interesting things I've run across lately. The first  
was a study that estimated the cost of bugs in Excel spreadsheets to  
the U.S. economy. The other two were a history of PowerStep for the  
NextStep machine, and a different product based on PowerStep that  
targets the financial market, runs on Windows and costs about $1,000/ 
person. Both products' marketing argue that they cut down on bugs by  
having separate formulas that use column names in the code.

I'll keep looking, let me know if you find anything good. I feel this  
is one of many ways that programmers earn their keep - and as a  
programmer, I'm glad to see some studies quantizing the cost of  
spreadsheet bugs :-)

Here are some other related items I found while looking for the older  
articles:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/06/19/excel_snafu_costs_firm_24m/

Here's a pay article advising against using standalone spreadsheet  
documents:
http://www.cfoproject.com/documents.asp?d_ID=2842

On Jan 15, 2008, at 12:11 PM, Henry House wrote:

> On 2008-01-15, wrote Harold Lee:
> [...]
>> I advocate separating the data and code - some recent studies point
>> out that bugs in Excel code are actually a widespread and expensive
>> problem. As you pointed out, even just having a version-controlled  
>> CSV
>> file and linking it in to a spread sheet should provide some  
>> protection.
>
> Got a reference? I've long suspected this but lacked documentation to
> demonstrate it.
>
> -- 
> Henry House
> +1 530 753 3361 ext. 13
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