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Smalltalk As A Convertor of Excel Spreadsheets - Georg Heeg

In the real life of business people Excel spreadsheets play an important role. They are easy to create, easy to modify, easy to deliver. Copy – Paste – modify is the standard Excel (programming) activity. Cells named by row and column represent the data model (or object model if you prefer). This is easy and absolutely not scalable. In my personal real life as manager of my company I have Excel spreadsheets as everybody else. And I have to consolidate them, sometimes over many years. By whatever reason, in 2002 some data might be in column D which is in 2003 to 2005 in column E and since 2006 in column F. Doing the consolidation in VBA is almost as painful as doing it manually (unifying the original spreadsheets), while the latter has the extra challenge to be error-prone. Our silver bullet is Smalltalk. I create a real object model for the business presented in the spreadsheets, I use COM Connect to populate the object model, I use Smalltalk to transform the objects (consolidate), and use COM Connect to create Excel spreadsheets in the format desired for the consolidated information.

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Smalltalk Solutions
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797 views19 pages

Smalltalk As A Convertor of Excel Spreadsheets - Georg Heeg

In the real life of business people Excel spreadsheets play an important role. They are easy to create, easy to modify, easy to deliver. Copy – Paste – modify is the standard Excel (programming) activity. Cells named by row and column represent the data model (or object model if you prefer). This is easy and absolutely not scalable. In my personal real life as manager of my company I have Excel spreadsheets as everybody else. And I have to consolidate them, sometimes over many years. By whatever reason, in 2002 some data might be in column D which is in 2003 to 2005 in column E and since 2006 in column F. Doing the consolidation in VBA is almost as painful as doing it manually (unifying the original spreadsheets), while the latter has the extra challenge to be error-prone. Our silver bullet is Smalltalk. I create a real object model for the business presented in the spreadsheets, I use COM Connect to populate the object model, I use Smalltalk to transform the objects (consolidate), and use COM Connect to create Excel spreadsheets in the format desired for the consolidated information.

Uploaded by

Smalltalk Solutions
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Georg Heeg eK Georg Heeg eK

Baroper Str. 337 Wallstraße 22


44227 Dortmund 06366 Köthen
Germany Germany
Tel: +49-231-97599-0 Tel: +49-3496-214 328
Fax: +49-231-97599-20 Fax: +49-3496-214 712

Georg Heeg AG
Seestraße 135
8027 Zürich
Switzerland
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +41(848) 43 34 24
http://www.heeg.de
Alexander Augustin
Georg Heeg
Georg Heeg eK

EXCEL Extraction
-
Modeling in Smalltalk as
Converter of Excel
Spreadsheets 2
Georg Heeg eK

• Founded 7/7/1987 in
Dortmund
– Original Mission
• Spread Smalltalk in Central Europe
• 1996
– Georg Heeg AG Zurich
• To serve the Swiss Market
• 1999
– Subsidiary in Köthen (Anhalt)
• To keep Family Heeg together
Main Activities

• 100% Smalltalk
– Training
– Consulting
– Product development for customers
– Own projects
– Own products
– Project support
Our Team

• 13 Smalltalkers
– 4 to 25 years of Smalltalk experience
– 6 certified Scrum Masters
• 2 Web Designers
• 4 Craftspeople
• 1 Business Administration Manager
Microsoft Excel

6
Office Market

Effective January, 2010 7


The Situation

• Business data is collected and stored in


Excel tables
– In our organization
– And others
• Short term needs allow
– Easy analysis
– Easy adaptations of the tables
• From year to year tables are slightly
modified
8
The Problem

• Trying to create analysis across years


– These little changes are extremely annoying
• Handwork is needed
– Labor-intense
– Error prone

9
The Problem

• Flexibility in the small


• Difficulty in the large
• Same reason: Excel Data Model
– Data in cells
– Addressed by row and column
• Business models
– Human only readable in texts
– Incomprehensible for Excel programming
10
Our Concept I

• Model business models in Smalltalk


– Object oriented
• Excel-to-Smalltalk-Interface
– Based upon COM Connect
– Fills the business model with data
– For each variant of Excel tables a variant of
the import functionality is used

11
Our Concept II

• Analysis is done in the business models


using business rules
• Smalltalk-to-Excel-Interface
– Based upon COM Connect
– New Excel Spreadsheets are written with an
overview of the analysis results

12
COM Office API I

• VisualWorks 7.8 COM Connect will


provide an updated API for easy Office
communication
autoformat
• COMAutomationApplication activeSheetName:
getAllCells
• ExcelApplication isVisible:
• WordApplication selectSheet:
open:
saveAs:
…
Experiences

• Timetable management at Anhalt


University
• Cost overview real estate renovation for
SALEG - Sachsen-Anhaltinische
Landesentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH
• In the domain of automation in the
industry

14
Demo

• Part 1
– Black Box Demo
• Timetable management at Anhalt University
• Part 2
– Let’s go into the browsers
• Part 3
– Let’s look at Word

15
Base

• Cincom VisualWorks 7.8


• Com Connect
– Reflection
• Without mirror classes
• Without mirror methods
• Just objects created from the Type Library
• Just simple

16
Status

• Service offering as part of Smalltalk


projects we do
• Goal
– Individual service

17
Summary

• Overcome Excel concept limitations


• Easy to understand analysis
• No error prone handwork
• Modeling of the business
– Thus conceptual correctness
• Reproducible analysis
• Adaptability to changing Excel formats
• Independent of Excel version

18
Georg Heeg eK Georg Heeg eK
Baroper Str. 337 Wallstraße 22
44227 Dortmund 06366 Köthen
Germany Germany
Tel: +49-231-97599-0 Tel: +49-3496-214 328
Fax: +49-231-97599-20 Fax: +49-3496-214 712

Georg Heeg AG
Seestraße 131
8027 Zürich
Switzerland
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +41(848) 43 34 24
http://www.heeg.de

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