PLEASE READ IF YOU PROGRAM: Help Continue Visual Basic
Mike
I first want to say sorry to posting the same message to so many forums but
we need your help preserve the Microsoft Visual Basic Language for it is a
valiable asset!!!!
If you do any VB programming you should know that currently the mainstream
support for VB6 ended on March 31, 2005. And if you do any VB coding please
help us and sign the petition that we are sending to Microsoft for
continuation of support!
Please sign the Petition to continue VB... (click below)
http://classicvb.org/petition/index.asp
This is only to help protect a language that has made life easy for a ton of
us!!!
Here is some additional info:
Will VB 9 Win Over the VB 6 Faithful?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1869134,00.asp
VB: Past, Present, Future
http://www.bitwisemag.com/copy/features/vb6/vbpastpresentfuture.html
Please help keep a language around that has been here since 1980. It can
make everyones like easier to deal with. Especially us old timers. (smile)
Mike
Harlan Grove
...
>If you do any VB programming you should know that currently the mainstream
>support for VB6 ended on March 31, 2005. And if you do any VB coding please
>help us and sign the petition that we are sending to Microsoft for
>continuation of support!
>Please help keep a language around that has been here since 1980. It can
>make everyones like easier to deal with. Especially us old timers. (smile)
First, don't make patently untrue statements in advocacy. The BASIC
that existed in 1980 is definitely NOT any version of VB, nor even
close to QBASIC. The old, mandatory line number BASIC deserved its
extinction. Visual Basic if you include its immediate predecessor Quick
Basic has only been around since the late 1980s.
Next, this is one of the pleasures of using proprietary languages: the
company that sells the language you've come to depend upon has the
unilateral ability to pull the rug out from under you. It's your own
fault for choosing a proprietary language.
You might want to consider whether it'd be easier to port to
PowerBASIC, RealBASIC or TrueBASIC. It's unlikely any of those BASIC
dialects would sacrifice backward compatibility.
aaron...@gmail.com
you're a fucking commie, a liar and an asshole
VBA is; was and always will be supported in OFFICE.
this is the most popular language in the WORLD.
Harlan Grove
...
>VBA is; was and always will be supported in OFFICE.
>
>this is the most popular language in the WORLD.
You're just a moron. Your capacity for rational discussion in
newsgroups (much less formulating political opinions) compares
unfavorably to most pieces of furniture.
Did I mention VBA? No. VB 6.
VB 6 was never close to the cash cow Office is, so forcing a switch
from VB 6 to either VB.Net or VB 9 isn't going to cost Microsoft much
revenue.
Dropping VBA support from Office would mean instead of most companies
upgrading to the latest Office version over 3 years they'd skip
upgrading users who rely on VBA-intensive applications. Unlike you,
Microsoft isn't that stupid.
Besides, VBA is a bundled scripting language. If one uses proprietary
scriptable software, one kinda expects to have to use proprietary
scripting languages. When have you ever heard of anyone using VBA to
write stand-alone .EXEs or .DLLs?
As for relying on Microsoft supporting VBA way into the distant future,
I wonder what VB 6 developers believed back in 2002? Maybe you don't
need to worry yet, but it's just a matter of time before we see C#A.
aaron...@gmail.com
i just dont think that you were really explaining that completely.
do you honestly disagree that VB6 / VBS / VBA is the most popular
language in the world?
im sorry that you're an APPLE / MAC / EXCEL kiddie.. but there are
better thigns out there than using
PowerBASIC, RealBASIC or TrueBASIC
i mean-- get real.
I USE THE BEST VB IDE IN THE WORLD.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S CALLED??
MS ACCESS MOFO
Harlan Grove
>do you honestly disagree that VB6 / VBS / VBA is the most popular
>language in the world?
VBA may be most widely used because it's pretty much all there is in
Office apps, and there's likely more Office users than all the full
time programmers in the world.
VBS? You're joking. If you mean in web pages, it's gotta be WAY BEHIND
Java and PHP.
And VB 6 is only a few short years away from end of support cycle
oblivion. It won't matter how popular it may have been if no one in
their right mind would use it for NEW projects.
>im sorry that you're an APPLE / MAC / EXCEL kiddie.. but there are
>better thigns out there than using
>PowerBASIC, RealBASIC or TrueBASIC
True. Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, Java, even C#. I don't like BASIC in any
dialect.
>I USE THE BEST VB IDE IN THE WORLD.
...
>MS ACCESS MOFO
Oh, so relevant to most VB 6 developers. The future, like it or not, is
VB.Net or VB 9, Visual Studio and LINQ.
HAND
aaron...@gmail.com
you fairy go and play with your trendy new tool.. just do you 'dont
have to learn sql'
get a life harlan
learn SQL and stop being a wimp
maybe if you used a real language you would have enough time to learn
SQL
little trendy kid; shit.. go play with your spreadsheets. and your
VBA.
and you know what confuses me.. i thoguht that VS was going to be
called VB8 since i thought that VS 2002 = VS7 and VS 2003 = VS 7.1
i just dont think that you have any clue whats out in the real world.
and i hope and pray for the day that you spreadsheet dweebs get kicked
to the curb and replaced by some jr high kid that can do excel better
than you lol
Harlan Grove
>Linq?
>
>you fairy go and play with your trendy new tool.. just do you 'dont
>have to learn sql'
One thing I'm not is a VB developer. Personally, I don't care one way
or the other whether VB 6 gets killed or revived. However, I do think
I've learned how to tell which direction Microsoft is heading in, and
while there may be an outside chance VB 6 will survive, LINQ is here to
stay (until replaced by the next Great New Thing!).
And reread my posts. I know more about SQL and databases than you know
about spreadsheets. 'course that ain't exactly saying much.
aaron...@gmail.com
shit you're the biggest fair-weather fan I've ever met-- let me guess;
you're rooting for the Colts this year and last year you rooted for the
Eagles.. right??
just for the record; i know a lot about spreadsheets.
when I was just out of college; i had to write the same damn
spreadsheets a dozen times a day... i finally figured out how to
automate it and now im making 8x as much money as i was back then.
meanwhile, you're 'scared to be seen as a programmer'.
you're sitting around making the same friggin spreadsheet week in and
week out
AND YOU DESERVE TO BE BEGGING FOR LUNCH MONEY ON 3RD AVENUE. YOUR
SKILLSET IS **NOTHING** EXCEL IS A DISEASE AND YOU HAVEN'T ADAPTED TO
THE 21st CENTURY.
i dont think that you know the slightest thing about databases. I
mean.. why would you be a spreadsheet wimp if you knew ANSI-SQL?
and again-- just for the record.. when I say VB6 I include VBA and VBS.
VB6 IS here to stay whehter Microsoft likes it or not. I mean-- it's
by far the most popular language in the world...
when Office12 comes out and if you can write VB.net inside of Excel and
Access- -then VB.net might have a chance.
as it is; microsoft is too fragmented and disorganized to know their
heads from their asses. is it my fault that MS tried to sell us all on
a version of VB that was.. uh-um.. .LESS POWERFUL?
Does it mean that VB is going away?
VB6 isn't going away; it is never going away
You can pry VB6 out of my cold dead hands after you shoot me.
Because i'll be using it until the day I die (until MS comes out with
something better and FASTER and EASIER).
i mean.. how many access databases use JAVA?
Do you have any comprehension that Access is the worlds most popular
database?
it's true Harlan.. there are more Access applications / databases than
Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server COMBINED.
how many spreadsheets use PHP and PYTHON?
gag me with a spoon harlan; take your trendy shit and shove it.
don't talk shit about vb6; you aren't qualified to even say the word
VB6.
go back to your hole, play with your spreadsheets.
and don't speak unless you're spoken to.. i think that you'll here us
calling 'here harlan, come here baby spreadsheet dork'
Harlan Grove
>LINQ
>shit you're the biggest fair-weather fan I've ever met-- let me guess;
Provide one url to the Google Groups newsgroups archines in which I've
*EVER* said anything positive about any dialect of the BASIC
programming language. Just one.
I'll admit I don't know much about LINQ, having only read about it in
the articles linked to the OP and a few articles in
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq/. If you believe
Microsoft is serious about .Net (and you'll lower my estimate of your
intelligence even further if you don't), it seems pretty clear they'll
be pretty serious about LINQ.
And I'm agnostic on the subject.
>just for the record; i know a lot about spreadsheets.
Unproven.
>when I was just out of college; i had to write the same damn
>spreadsheets a dozen times a day... i finally figured out how to
>automate it and now im making 8x as much money as i was back then.
>meanwhile, you're 'scared to be seen as a programmer'.
I don't spend much of my normal workday programming (or writing
spreadsheet formulas), so it'd be misleading to call myself a
programmer.
And I suppose you had to keep writing the same spreadsheet so many
times until you got it right. Did you ever manage?
>i dont think that you know the slightest thing about databases. I
>mean.. why would you be a spreadsheet wimp if you knew ANSI-SQL?
Most of the spreadsheet tasks I have I can complete in a fraction of
the time it'd take me to define the tables I'd need to put the data
into in most databases. Access is lots easier, but still not as
efficient FOR ME.
>and again-- just for the record.. when I say VB6 I include VBA and VBS.
>VB6 IS here to stay whehter Microsoft likes it or not. I mean-- it's
>by far the most popular language in the world...
VBA has an entirely different user base. And it *IS* likely to be
around for several more years. [I'm not going to worry until Microsoft
pulls the plug on XLM.]
VBS? Drop the first letter, and that about sums it up.
VB6 will probably be used by independent programmers and small software
development companies until Windows evolves to a state which VB6 can't
support. That's unlikely to happen in the next 10 years. So those
developers may go on using VB6 for a while. In house programmers, on
the other hand, have mostly stopped using VB6 already. Where I work,
they migrated to VB.Net over 2 years ago and have been busy since then
rewriting key applications in VB.Net.
As I see it Microsoft has two choices: let VB6 die (which will piss off
die-hard VB6 developers who don't want to move to VB.Net) or revive it
(which will piss off all the IT departments that have already invested
heavily in migrating from VB6). It's all a question of where the
*FUTURE* revenue will come from.
If Microsoft opts for the former, what are the VB6 die-hards going to
do? Some will stick with VB6 until the bitter end (unreliable revenue
stream, irrational developers). Some will switch to non-Microsoft
development systems (even if RealBASIC's business doubled, it'd still
be puny compared to Microsoft's remaining VB products). And some will
finally move on the Microsoft's successor products (more money for
Microsoft).
If Microsoft opts for the latter, what are the IT departments going to
do? Some will cease migrating to VB.Net and go back to using VB6. Some
will continue migrating. All will be very slow to adopt the next
Microsoft Great New Thing!
In other words, pissing off the VB6 die-hards is likely to result in
less lost revenue than pissing off IT departments. If so, VB6 will die
off within a decade no matter how popular it may once have been.
>when Office12 comes out and if you can write VB.net inside of Excel and
>Access- -then VB.net might have a chance.
...
Doubtful. Still VBA. [If only I could have access to native associative
arrays and regular expressions!]
>VB6 isn't going away; it is never going away
Just as there are still some people using WordStar.
>You can pry VB6 out of my cold dead hands after you shoot me.
>Because i'll be using it until the day I die (until MS comes out with
>something better and FASTER and EASIER).
You may be doing so for yourself, but the VB6 jobs are going to become
scarcer & scarcer.
>i mean.. how many access databases use JAVA?
How many Access databases power web servers?
>Do you have any comprehension that Access is the worlds most popular
>database?
There may be more copies of Access in use than any other database
product, but unless most of the web servers running Apache are doing so
under Windows, they ain't running Access. And few banks or insurance
companies I'm aware of are using Access on their mainframes. In terms
of transaction counts, I suspect DB2, Oracle and, yes, SQL Server are
way ahead of Access. There are many more Ford Fiestas than there are
Mack trucks, but who's shipping goods using a fleet of Fiestas?
>it's true Harlan.. there are more Access applications / databases than
>Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server COMBINED.
If you count all the queries and reports on every machine running
Access, you're probably right. But if you mean in terms of either
transaction counts or system CPU time, Access is way behind. Also, your
'point' may be a good indicator that there may be A LOT of redundant,
duplicate queries and reports on Access machines.
>how many spreadsheets use PHP and PYTHON?
...
Dunno about PHP and spreadsheets. It's a VBS killer, not a VBA killer.
Gnumeric and OpenOffice Calc are scriptable using Python. Any more
ignorant questions?
aaron...@gmail.com
i just think that you're crazy
go out and learn some new query language.. suit yourslef
SQL is the best language in the world.. and VB and SQL is a very
powerful combo
i just wish you the best of luck. you don't deserve to make $10 when
all you do is make the same damn xls every week. no matter how complex
it is.
Harlan Grove
>a vbs killer shit.. technically, vbs is a php/python killer; isn't it?
Watch the Netcraft survey. If you see IIS seriously gaining on Apache,
then IIS would be dragging VBS along with it. But the last time IIS
gained ground against Apache was early 2002, so claims that VBS is
anything more than a distant 4th or 5th place in web page scripting
would appear contrary to the evidence unless there's a ton of intranets
running nothing but VBS. Dunno. My company's intranet is Domino-based,
so decidedly not VBS.
FWIW, checking script code in home pages, my bank uses javascript, my
kids soccer league uses javascript, AAA uses javascript, American
Airlines uses javascript (as do Southwest and United), Amazon.com uses
javascript, Springer Verlag uses javascript, Google uses javascript,
sourceforge.net uses javascript. Even Microsoft itself uses javascript.
Heck, even Microsoft's aspx web pages, e.g.,
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdate/default.aspx
use javascript. If VBS was so darn wonderful, why won't Microsoft use
it themselves?
And I just found
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/benchmarks.html
which provides some evidence that PHP is faster than ASP, and both are
dogs compared to CGI (though CGI running compiled C++ rather than
interpretted scripting languages).
aaron...@gmail.com
that doesn't mean that i can't write apps 4 times as fast as your java
kiddies.
that doesn't mean that vbscript isn't the best solution for an intranet
site.
IE has a 85% marketshare. IE is 100% compatabile with vbscript.
I can create a spreadsheet; add a bunch of cells and do whatever i
want.. i can reuse my excel macros-- in a webpage. I can do anything
in the world.
Why would i want to TRANSLATE my vba into java so i could run it
through a webbrowser?
i mean seriously?
I have one language for
a) scripting
b) web development
c) excel macros
d) database apps
e) hardcore database etl
f) hardcore database job management
i mean-- java can't do half of these functions. Oracle and a IBM and a
billion dollars can't do half of these operations.
Don't you wish your langauge was portable like me?
Friggin trendy kids
PHP can't make a spreadsheet. Python and Perl; i mean-- what the hell
have you been smoking?
Why does every developer need to learn 20 million languages?
oh yeah-- you're an IBM shop and they just have people sitting around
makign your life harder to help you make it look like you're busier..
right?
because if your managers KNEW that you jerked off and spent half the
day writing the same damn spreadsheet-- then they knew that you would
be out of a job. So IBM sells you all this crap that isn't necessary;
it doesn't work. And it ISNT RELIABLE ENOUGH.
I just worked at an environment where IBM hosted our AS400 / iSeries
for us.
Do you know what they had the nerve to do? They rebooted out AS400
once a month.
I mean WHY?
WHY WHY WHY?
because IBM can't COMPETE with Windows. Windows is more reliable, more
secure-- than any of this other crap that is put out by IBM.
and just for the record; IIS _IS_ gaining ground on apache. IIS6--
part of Windows Server 2003-- is the best product to ever come out of
redmond. It is fast, stable, secure-- it is almost the same price as
apache. It supports native compression-- so everything in the whole
wide world you do just got 30-50-70% faster.
Does apache do that?
Out of the box?
Just because your company is run by a bunch of IBM con artists; that
doesn't mean that it's the best solution. I mean.. if you need to get
a list of all your users in your company.. how can you get info out of
notes and into an access database?
Can you do that? is it the same as right-click LINK to outlook global
address list
i mean.. i've worked in 2 notes environments recently. and i never
realized how much i loved outlook exchange until i had to start usign
some piece of crap that was slow and not as powerful.
i mean-- why in the hell do you smoke IBM pole?
i mean seriously?
does it taste good?
10 million free sites vs half-a-million million dollar sites?
And IIS vs Apache has nothign to do with VBS vs Javascript vs any of
that other crap you spew.
THERE ARE A LOT OF APACHE CONFIGURATIONS THAT ALLOW VBSCRIPT, FOR
STARTERS.
and just for the record, Harlan.. Java-- is crap
i mean.. you're friggin whacked you crackhead.
for starters, clientside scripting-- all clientside scripting-- is a
disease. shit like that should be done via the server side; and all
you trendy 'yeah but we use ajax'-- i mean
DOES AJAX REALLY TRUMP CRAIGSLIST?
WHY ISN'T CRAIGSLIST AJAX?
What is more relevant for you today, ebay or Craigslist?
more websites should be plain old text; worrying about things like
performance instead of crap like flash and clientside bullshit.
all it does is slow down the browser.
MS _DOES_ use vbscript on the server side.. it is automagically
interpreted depending on what browser you're using. can apache do
THAT?
but it's obvious that you're too stupid to know the diff between
clientside and serverside scripting.
i know that they do; i've seen it and written it there. Have you
worked as a web developer at Microsoft?
go play with your spreadsheets, little boy. And your AOL and go and
learn a half dozen languages like perl and python-- all that crap.. I
mean.. it's like.. a carpenter.. that really NEEDS to get better at
swinging a nail and hammer-- they decide to take their efforts and
learn how to jumprope.
does jumping-rope make him better at swinign a hammer and nail?
NO.
Does Perl and Python make you a better spreadsheet dork?
NO.
Does VB / VB6 / VBA / VBS make you a better spreadsheet dork? IT SURE
DOES.
Would SQL make you a better spreadsheet dork?
It sure would, then you could use Access and build SOLUTIONS instead of
building the same damn XLS 4 times per week.
Your method of
a) deciding what to learn
b) deciding what tools to use
c) deciding who is winning the server side war (by looking at
clientside stats)
You are the least scientific person i've ever met. The least practical
person i've ever met Harlan.
i am a firm believer in 2 languages.
vb and php. I'm a big PHP developer. www.squadstudios.com
www.smarkpunk.com -- i mean.. VB just isn't fast enough to do this
shit; i'll be the first to admit it.
php is very very powerful.
and I dont believe that CGI is faster than ANYTHING. I mean-- CGI is
crap kid.
and just for the record-- the URL from wrensoft; where you compare php
and asp and all that crap -- is this study scientific?
for starters, you are comparing ASP to PHP5-- i mean-- comparing circa
1998 ASP with PHP that is supposed to come out in 2006. i mean; are you
on crack?
grow up harlan.
Harlan Grove
>yeah. everyone uses javascript.
>
>that doesn't mean that i can't write apps 4 times as fast as your java
>kiddies.
Unproven. It's easy to make big claims.
And you're the one constantly drawing the equivalence most widely used
= BEST.
Can't maintain the logical consistency of your arguments, can you?
>IE has a 85% marketshare. IE is 100% compatabile with vbscript.
And 100% compatible with darn near all the malware out on the Internet.
What a program!
>I can create a spreadsheet; add a bunch of cells and do whatever i
>want.. i can reuse my excel macros-- in a webpage. I can do anything
>in the world.
Except maintain the consistency of your arguments.
>Don't you wish your langauge was portable like me?
Portable between a few Microsoft products. We just don't share the same
definition of 'portable'.
>PHP can't make a spreadsheet. Python and Perl; i mean-- what the hell
>have you been smoking?
Dunno about PHP and Python, but if you want to create XLS files in per,
visit CPAN and search for the module Spreadsheet-WriteExcel-2.15.
>Why does every developer need to learn 20 million languages?
...
They don't. It appears most who write Internet (as opposed to intranet)
find javascript sufficient. And when it isn't, the beauty of languages
that evolved from C is that if you know the basic syntax from one, you
know the basic syntax for all. Python is the odd one out, but it's
already pretty widely used in Linux/BSD/Solaris/Unix and Windows
systems (dunno about Macs).
>Do you know what they had the nerve to do? They rebooted out AS400
>once a month.
>I mean WHY?
>
>WHY WHY WHY?
...
Probably for the same reason it's a good idea to reboot Windows NT4 and
2000 boxes once a week if not more frequently.
I've never worked for companies that used AS/400 minis, only for
companies using mainframes running under MVS and Unix (Solaris
actually) servers.
>because IBM can't COMPETE with Windows. Windows is more reliable, more
>secure-- than any of this other crap that is put out by IBM.
Dunno about OS/400, but AIX, mainframe Linux, MVS and VM are pretty
solid, though definitely not small box OS's.
>and just for the record; IIS _IS_ gaining ground on apache. IIS6--
>part of Windows Server 2003-- is the best product to ever come out of
>redmond. It is fast, stable, secure-- it is almost the same price as
>apache. It supports native compression-- so everything in the whole
>wide world you do just got 30-50-70% faster.
...
Apache is free, and when running under Linux, the OS is also free. IIS
may be bundled with Windows Server, but Windows Server ain't close to
free. And your claims about IIS gaining on Apache are refuted by the
Netcraft survey data. IIS hasn't gained ground on Apache in years. Or
do you have your own survey results from tens of millions of web
servers? Or are you just talking out your backside yet again?
>Just because your company is run by a bunch of IBM con artists; that
>doesn't mean that it's the best solution. I mean.. if you need to get
>a list of all your users in your company.. how can you get info out of
>notes and into an access database?
It's called NotesSQL. It's an ODBC driver. You do know what ODBC is,
don't you?
>THERE ARE A LOT OF APACHE CONFIGURATIONS THAT ALLOW VBSCRIPT, FOR
>STARTERS.
...
A quick few Google searches make it seem that Apache::ASP only supports
Perl. You'd need Chilisoft to run VBSCRIPT, but Chilisoft seems to have
negligible market share. See
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200104/apachemods.html?mod=Q2hpbGlzb2Z0
So where be all these Apache configurations running VBSCRIPT? Mostly in
your imagination?
>What is more relevant for you today, ebay or Craigslist?
Neither.
>MS _DOES_ use vbscript on the server side.. it is automagically
>interpreted depending on what browser you're using. can apache do
>THAT?
Opening the quetion whether servers should behave differently for
different browsers.
>i know that they do; i've seen it and written it there. Have you
>worked as a web developer at Microsoft?
...
Nope. I know you claim to have. Odd that such a valued ex-contractor
has his posts regularly purged from Microsoft's own nntp servers.
You'll find your rants in this thread in Google Groups but not on
msnews.microsoft.com. Wassa madda, they can you because you have the
interpersonal skills of a virulent bacillus?
Now as for server side scripting, since most sites run Apache, it's not
a stretch to infer that most of those sites are running mostly Perl
code. It's a certainty few if are running VB<whatever>.
aaron...@gmail.com
and you dont need to know python and perl to beat it.. i mean.. come on
harlan.. windows antispyware is like what, free?
and for the record, I am at war with MS because they fired me for the
wrong reason.
sql server has some ridiculous holes in it-- im knowledgeable to know,
i used to work for antivirus at Microsoft and i know that firsthand; MS
is behaving irresponsibly.
but that doesnt mean that it's not the best product on the market.
i've worked with DB2 and Oracle and mySql. I know the other products
on the market.
I believe that Microsoft is 'too secretive'. I mean-- all of their
bugs should be in the public domain because we've got just as much
invested in Windows as they do.
and my car got jacked from MS and they dont have cameras in their
parking lots.
i mean-- $70bn in the bank and they can't control a couple of drunk
rich kids from bellevue
i think that MS is crazy for not buying Macromedia. I mean-- they let
that one get away.
but I did a good job for MS; and I do a good job for all my clients.
I have business-- 10 times as much business as I can handle.
I know that MS makes the best products on the market. but they have
grown fat and dumb and lazy. they accept mediocrity. and i dont
believe in that; when you have $70bn in the bank you should fix every
bug and fix it twice.
I have a laundry list of bugs that they won't fix.
it drives me crazy. I got kicked out for kicking and screaming.
I mean.. I worked for MSN Quality of Service; and I got fired for
complaining about hotmail reliability. I mean.. I was having hotmail
failures like 5 times a day on a half-dozen different machines.
and I swear it wasn't a malware/spyware problem. I worked for eTrust.
I spidered PestPatrols database-- for Microsoft-- while working for
Computer Associates. CA then bought CA. I mean...
I just know that you guys are trapped at 10% of your own potential.
Because you are handicapped Excel dorks. Your reliance on Excel is
making you obsolete and you need to wake up and smell the coffee.
Database people 'crunch more numbers' than Excel people. Database
people make the world go around.
If spreadsheets were in charge of the internet; there would be no
Amazon, no Google. No Oracle, No IBM. No Ebay, No Craigslist. No
Seattle Times.
No kozmo.com-- none of these magical places would exist if you
spreadsheet people were in charge.
Excel is never the right tool for a single thing. I mean.. all data is
relational and if you can't see it that way; go and take a class.
-Aaron
ADP Nationalist
Harlan Grove
...
>and for the record, I am at war with MS because they fired me for the
>wrong reason.
The world is wrong but Aaron is right. There's treatment for this
affliction.
>I have a laundry list of bugs that they won't fix.
...
Don't we all. Microsoft wastes no money on coding that won't generate
many times that in revenue. When in an effective monopoly position,
there are very few worthwhile revenue-generating fixes. Adding new
features (new sources for yet more bugs) gets the programming resources
because that's what sells upgrades.
You're not more cynical than me, just more paranoid.
>it drives me crazy. I got kicked out for kicking and screaming.
...
. . . and whining, and arguing, and in short just being the Aaron with
whom we've all been forced to become acquainted.
Your loss doesn't seem to have hurt Microsoft much.
aaron...@gmail.com
they need to raise the bar.
that is all i got fired for saying.
it's ridiculous to fire a strong coder whose only fault is speakign the
truth.
it's ridiculous that there aren't more people that complain about
things.
and i think that it's riduclous that you're sitting there trying to
tell spreadsheet newbies to run out and learn perl, python; all that
crap
Oorang
tools neccasary to learn databases. Moreover if they DO have the tools there
are far more people able to help with excel than other products. Finally
while databases are really good at handling large numbers of records and
putting controls around data entry, they just can't compete when it comes to
analysing data.
<aaron...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131480578....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
aaron...@gmail.com
it's about half as powerful as access-- but leaps and bounds more
powerful then that excel
DATABASES DO ANALYSE DATA
FUCKNUT
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ANALYZE DATA YOU TRENDY MARKETING DIPSHIT.
I CAN MAKE THE SAME NUMBERS YOU CAN. FASTER.
You are a consumer.
I am a producer.
Go and play with your barbies kiddie
'while databases are really good at handling large numbers of records
and putting controls around data entry (EVERYTHING YOU DIPSHITS DO IN
EXCEL IS DATA ENTRY) it just can't compete when it comes to analysing
data?'
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU TALK ABOUT?
YOU'RE SAYING I CAN'T THROW A COUPLE OF NUMBERS AROUND AND MAKE A
REPORT?
are you challenging me?
how about this.. you have 100 kids sitting around making the same
fucking spreadsheet week in and week out.
and i'll have 1 db developer; building reuseable reports.
i can schedule my reports to get emailed.
meanwhile; you can REWRITE your spreadsheet and EMAIL IT BY HAND.
Are you a pivotTable user? I mean.. do you know how to drag and drop
controls around and make your pretty little pivotTable reports?
Well; kiddo-- OLAP-- as in ANALYSIS SERVICES makes pivotTables about 10
times more powerful.
you can have drillDOWN, drillUP, drillTHROUGH. you can have actions
Excel-- normal excel pivotTables dont do jack shit so go and fuck an
excel book for all i care.
i can 'analyse' numbers faster than you can fucking imagine.
I mean.. have you seen olap pivotTables?
if you excel dorks would stop making spreadsheets; and started building
real database apps-- maybe us database folk could give you real tools.
EVERYWHERE I'VE EVER BEEN DATABASE PEOPLE DO 2/3 OF THE WORK WITH
1/10TH OF THE HEADCOUNT.
SO FUCK YOURSELF TRENDY FRATBOY.
As it is; 50% of all of the employees across america do nothing but
type shit into excel week in and week out.
i mean-- there is a better way; Access came out 12 years ago, I
believe. IBM has had databases for 30+ years.
There is no way in fuck that you can hang with the numbers i throw
around. i mean.. seriously..
people like you are a disease.
people like you are why we have idiots running around building 2
GIGABYTE SPREADSHEETS. I mean.. any workbooks with more than one cell;
is -- by definition-- complex enough to warrant a database.
do you have any comprehension how many fucked up spreadsheet problems
i've seen in my day?
they really should line you people up and ship you to siberia; because
from where im standing you idiots are betraying america. i mean..
tuh---reason.
you sit there and build the same fucking spreadsheet week in and week
out. while these kids out in india are throwing around reports like you
woudln't believe.
I mean-- aren't you tired of building the same damn spreadsheet week in
and week out?
you are the fat, lazy assholes that are bringing about the demise of
this country.
STEP OUTSIDE YOUR CUBICLE AND GET A FUCKING LIFE. LEARN SOME SKILLS AND
MAYBE YOU'LL BE WORTH $10/HOUR.
AS IT IS; YOU GUYS AREN'T WORTH MINIMUM WAGE.
EXCEL IS A DISEASE AND YOU ALL ARE LEPERS.
yeah.. and then let's have all these spreadsheet newbies learn perl and
python
fucking idiots
learn vba and get over it. start building tools instead of just
running around and patting yourself on the back every 5 minutes because
YAY I CAN CUT AND COPY AND PASTE 10 BILLION TIMES A DAY.
fucking retards.
you really and honestly should be lined up and shot. the world would
be a much better place.
i mean-- what are you contributing to your company?
what are you contributing to society?
are you fighting for the pink team; or are you going to be a database
USER when you grow up?
being able to write queries; being able to write vba... being able to
write HTML.. these are all skills that you guys skate through life
without learning.
in a perfect world; MS would just come out with a half-dozen different
certification levels for Excel.
and then maybe companies could start hiring knowledgeable people.
Maybe MS should take the MCSE model and apply it to spreadsheets; and
start prodding you cattle to actually learn something.
as it is, everyone 'knows excel'-- I know excel. I know excel well
enough that I would rather give head to a homeless man than ever hire a
spreadsheet dork.
i mean.. should you really copy the formula DOWN and copy and paste it
100 times an hour?
fucking idiots.
doesn't that give you 100 copies of the same formula; what happens when
you need to change it?
i mean seriously
WHO IN THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SIT DOWN KIDDIE AND STOP... I MEAN
SHUT THE FUCK UP GROW THE FUCK UP
your skillset is REPLACEABLE and this is war.
Eat shit; we're coming to put you out of work
spreadsheet dipshits
aaron...@gmail.com
just because there's more people doing it; it doesn't mean it's the
right thing to do.
that is why you are a disease. GROUPTHINK numbnuts.
do you really believe that the sheer count of people has anything to do
with what people should learn?
i mean-- you idiots have been coasting for too fucking long
and you aren't worth minimum wage.
eat shit spreadsheet dipshit
you can't crunch numbers better than i can
you can't 'ANALYZE DATA' better than i can.
you sit there and copy and paste the same fucking thing 100 times. big
fucking deal. you dont deserve 10 cents an hour.
BECAUSE YOU GUYS SIT THERE AND BUILD THE SAME SPREADSHEET WEEK IN AND
WEEK OUT.
I mean.. what the fuck who do you think you are?
Excel is a disease; and you all are lepers
john sumner
<aaron...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131524309....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
And you are nothing but a google troll whomis going into my bozo bin *PLONK*
>
Harlan Grove
...
>DATABASES DO ANALYSE DATA
They can sum & they can count. Why, they can even average!
Sarcasm aside, any software that can be automated and can string
together arithmetic operations can perform general numerical analysis.
It's not so much the operators and functions that distinguish databases
and spreadsheets, it's the data referencing. There are some tasks for
which RDMBS data structure is beneficial, but there are many
calculation tasks that require plain multidimensional arrays. Sometimes
the only relationship between the data elements in arrays is just index
order.
While databases do many things well, they don't do such things as
matrix arithmetic or optimization well. Those are tasks which require
iterative procedures on simple matrices or indexed arrays. There's a
considerable amount of statistical, engineering and econometric
analysis that involves matrix and array processing. Certainly RDBMS's
can provide the data storage facility, but you're clearly outside your
ken if you believe SQL queries can produce partial correlation
coefficients from stepwise regression.
Yes, there are add-on tools, many of which are proprietary, most of
which cost extra, and nearly all of which aren't found on average Excel
users' PCs. Besides, the choice of add-on product depends on what the
user prefers to use based on a number of different criteria, including
their familiarity with the add-on products available, but usually not
with much weight given to Aaron's Orthodoxy.
>I CAN MAKE THE SAME NUMBERS YOU CAN. FASTER.
OK, I'll make this simple for you. Here's a table representing a 4x4
matrix. Show us, Oh Great Database Sage, the DBMS steps you'd take to
calculate its determinant and inverse. [Treat sequences of spaces and
underscores as field separators, but ignore the leading ones.]
Fld1__Fld2__Fld3__Fld4
-7__ -24___ -59___ 58
-78__ 65___ 56___ 22
59__ -60___ -31___ 47
35__ -21___ 10____ 1
Something tells me 99.999% of *rational* Access users would perform
this task by creating an Excel application instance and using its
WorksheetFunction.MInverse and WorksheetFunction.MDeterm to perform
these calculations, but I'm asking you to see how one irrational Access
user would do it.
>are you challenging me?
...
Dunno about the other respondent, but I am. See the challenge above.
See my previous challenge to which you never responded (link below).
For a change of pace, quit talking out your backside and PUT UP OR SHUT
UP.
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.excel/msg/2c1e73ffd974b4d2?dmode=source&hl=en
Harlan Grove
...
>just because there's more people doing it; it doesn't mean it's the
>right thing to do.
But the number of users seems to be your primary reason for claiming
VB/VBA/VBS is the best programming language. Why not try some logical
consistency for a change?
>do you really believe that the sheer count of people has anything to do
>with what people should learn?
Obviously. If most people are writing code in javascript, then the most
legacy code would be in javascript, no? Most code maintenance, in the
short term at least, would require some familiarity with javascript,
no?
Then again, why expect rationality from you? You'd no doubt advocate
ignoring any prior investment in code in other languages, so write all
apps from scratch in VBS.
This doesn't mean that javascript (or COBOL 30 years ago) was the best
language. Unlike you, I haven't made the argument that X is good
because so many people use it. It does seem many people find BASIC's
verbosity comforting relative to the terseness of C and its
descendants. Myself, I use BASIC only because there's no alternative in
some cases.
>you can't crunch numbers better than i can
If only you could demonstrate that you know how to do any number
crunching.
How would you identify statistically significant seasonality in sales
data for a given product?
Jay Petrulis
Harlan Grove wrote:
> aaron...@gmail.com wrote...
> ...
>
>
> >I CAN MAKE THE SAME NUMBERS YOU CAN. FASTER.
>
> OK, I'll make this simple for you. Here's a table representing a 4x4
> matrix. Show us, Oh Great Database Sage, the DBMS steps you'd take to
> calculate its determinant and inverse. [Treat sequences of spaces and
> underscores as field separators, but ignore the leading ones.]
>
> Fld1__Fld2__Fld3__Fld4
> -7__ -24___ -59___ 58
> -78__ 65___ 56___ 22
> 59__ -60___ -31___ 47
> 35__ -21___ 10____ 1
>
> Something tells me 99.999% of *rational* Access users would perform
> this task by creating an Excel application instance and using its
> WorksheetFunction.MInverse and WorksheetFunction.MDeterm to perform
> these calculations, but I'm asking you to see how one irrational Access
> user would do it.
>
> >are you challenging me?
> ...
>
> Dunno about the other respondent, but I am. See the challenge above.
> See my previous challenge to which you never responded (link below).
> For a change of pace, quit talking out your backside and PUT UP OR SHUT
> UP.
>
>
--- snip a bunch of stuff ---
Aaron,
If you can, please show how you would do Harlan's latest challenge in
Access. Please do not resort to some generality like you would use MDX
through Access. Stick to Access and give step by step details. No
broad overview, provide a specific answer.
Other posters who claim as much as you do are held to the same
standards. Just saying you can do this or do that does not make it so.
Please prove your competence with data analysis in Access, which
*you* claim.
Ignore the Excel angle. Please do not even consider it in your reply.
I would like to know how to do it in Access alone.
I do not care how long you have been working on whatever projects and
you can dispense with the preamble rants about anything and everything
Excel (Do you think it is a disease?) You need not worry if I produce
the same report every week. Just answer the challenge from Harlan.
Thanks,
Jay
Tony Toews
>and just for the record;
Aaron
If you could respond in a decent fashion without flipping your lid you'd get better
responses.
Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
aaron...@gmail.com
im sorry i dont 'respect' your investment in existing languages.
you are the asshole that is preaching the end of vb-- you started this
arg wimpo
there is no reason for anyone to learn java for any reason. I mean--
clientside is a PITA and it can't compete with good server-side code.
statisitically significant seasonality.. HMMM... well i'd take the MSDE
that ships with ACCESS (or is free from www.asp.net) and i'd use the
stdev function
aaron...@gmail.com
i'd translate this from java into vb or TSQL. and then use it in a
database? i'd keep the function in one place and it would be hella easy
to use.
technically how would i do this?
i'd take my handy-dandy MSDE install (free with windows basically) and
make a UDF that did this.
then i could take my precious little function and use it whenever i
wanted; and my friends could share it with me.
you see-- databases are designed for multiple users.
your gay-ass spreadsheet program can't even handle a single power user.
procedure minverse(var m1,m2: matrix);
var
i,j,k: integer;
s1,s2,s3: scalar;
m0: matrix;
begin { minverse }
write('(minverse'); flush(output);
m0:=m1;
for i:=0 to lmax do for j:=0 to lmax do szero(m2[i,j]);
for i:=0 to lmax do m2[i,i]:=sone;
for i:=0 to lmax do begin { simple Gauss-Jordan }
s1:=m0[i,i];
m0[i,i]:=sone;
for j:=i+1 to lmax do begin
squot(m0[i,j],s1,s2);
m0[i,j]:=s2;
end;
for j:=0 to lmax do begin
squot(m2[i,j],s1,s2);
m2[i,j]:=s2;
end;
for k:=0 to lmax do if k<>i then begin
s1:=m0[k,i];
szero(m0[k,i]);
for j:=i+1 to lmax do begin
sprod(s1,m0[i,j],s2);
sdiff(m0[k,j],s2,s3);
m0[k,j]:=s3;
end;
for j:=0 to lmax do begin
sprod(s1,m2[i,j],s2);
sdiff(m2[k,j],s2,s3);
m2[k,j]:=s3;
end;
end;
end;
write(')'); flush(output);
end { minverse };
aaron...@gmail.com
VB is the most popular language in the world-- for good reason. because
of spreadsheet dorks like you.
your problem harlan is that you just dont have any comprehension that
a) i can do any math you can but faster
b) im sick and tired of cutting and pasting the same formula 100 times
per day
c) it's less efficient to have 200 copies of the same formula
1) sheer storage
2) accuracy
3) development of these 'super-complex spreadsheets (gag)'
i just think that you guys are a bunch of fucking idiots.
grow up and lose the training wheels.
START BUILDING _SOLUTIONS_ instead of building the same damn XLS week
in and week out
Harlan Grove
>Microsoft needs to fix bugs.
Semantics. No question that they *SHOULD* fix bugs. Lord knows there
are lots of very longstanding bugs in Excel. Problem may be that these
bugs have been around so long that the Excel programmers may consider
them 'features' at this point.
But the only thing Microsoft *NEEDS* to do is earn money. If they can
rake in revenues without fixing bugs, why would they bother? One thing
that must be recognized about Microsoft: no matter how nice & upright
some Microsoft employees may be, Microsoft's corporate culture is, to
be charitable, amoral. Microsoft as an organization is oblivious to
'should' or 'ought'.
>they need to raise the bar.
>
>that is all i got fired for saying.
No doubt. Clearly you failed to appreciate the Microsoft's core
corporate culture: MAKING MONEY COMES FIRST, making decent software is
at best secondary.
>it's ridiculous to fire a strong coder whose only fault is speakign the truth.
Nope. There are lots of strong coders. You're among the few who seem
not to combine (claimed) programming ability with discretion or the
sense to know what's important to your bosses.
>it's ridiculous that there aren't more people that complain about things.
Inside Microsoft? Presumably the people who work for Microsoft want to
do so, and most of them realize when to shut up in order to continue to
do so.
Outside Microsoft? Do you read the newsgroups? There are frequent
complaints.
>and i think that it's riduclous that you're sitting there trying to
>tell spreadsheet newbies to run out and learn perl, python; all that
...
When? I've said I use perl. I've said Python is closely tied into
Gnumeric and OpenOffice Calc. I could add that it's possible to use
both (and REXX and Ruby and any other scripting language capable of
Automation) to automate Excel as a background process (though I'll
admit Excel as a background is a huge waste of resources). And I'll
repeat that there's a perl module that allows perl to create and modify
.XLS files without using Excel.
I've responded to unsubstantiated assertions you've made about how
wide-spread you believe VB, VBA and VBS code is. There may be a fair
amount of in-house VB apps in most medium to large corporations, and
there's definitely a lot of VBA code many extant Office document files.
There doesn't seem to be as much VBS code in use. I can't find any
definitive surveys on the most widely used scripting languages, but
from what digging I have done, it seems clear that a very small
fraction at most of web servers running Apache (so about 70% of all web
servers) would be running VBS code.
All of that's beside the point. Nearly all the people who post in
newsgroups for one or the other of the Office applications are looking
for solutions using those applications. VBA is often but not always
relevant, and it's certainly the best scripting language to use with
Office apps because it's built into the Office framework. VB proper and
VBS are mostly irrelevant for Office apps, though .DLLs could be
written in VB and VBS scripts could be added to Office app-generated
HTML files, but neither of those relatively esoteric tasks are relevant
to the vast majority of postings in Office app newsgroups.
Back to the original topic of this thread. VBA's future lifetime is
independent of that of VB6. Microsoft isn't foolish enough to kill off
VBA any time soon, and it'd offer its successor scripting language
(C#A?) as a parallel option for a few version cycles before it'd drop
VBA. So it's hard to see why people writing strictly VBA code for
Office apps should be any more concerned about the fate of VB6 than
that of COBOL. Similarly for VBS - it's use and future lifecycle are
independent of that of VB6.
So it comes down to whether Microsoft revives a VB6-like programming
language. As I've already written, to in-house VB coders who've already
switched to VB.Net (and they've done so in my company) reviving VB6 is
either an irrelevance or an annoyance. It's no longer an alternative.
Microsoft won't win points with or receive revenues from such customers
by reviving VB6. I have no idea what share of former VB6 programmers
have moved on to VB.Net, but if it's more than half, then A Dios VB6,
it was nice knowin' ya.
I'll also repeat that this is what could happen when one relies on
proprietary software. VB6 programmers who believed that Microsoft would
always be there to support them have no one but themselves to blame for
their own naivete. I won't stand in the way of their petition drive to
keep VB6 alive, but I believe it'll be as efficacious and writing Santa
Claus.
Jay Petrulis
aaron...@gmail.com wrote:
> http://www.ma.utexas.edu/mpej/Vol/1/6.supp/Section.6/linear/minverse
>
> i'd translate this from java into vb or TSQL. and then use it in a
> database? i'd keep the function in one place and it would be hella easy
> to use.
>
> technically how would i do this?
>
> i'd take my handy-dandy MSDE install (free with windows basically) and
> make a UDF that did this.
> then i could take my precious little function and use it whenever i
> wanted; and my friends could share it with me.
>
> you see-- databases are designed for multiple users.
> your gay-ass spreadsheet program can't even handle a single power user.
>
>
OK, you found a link to a matrix inverse function. And the
determinant?
How about the specifics? In the Excel newsgroups (possibly in the
Access newsgroups as well), complete step-by-step solutions are
sometimes given. Please do so for me, if you will.
Set me up from start to finish, please. Granted, that request is more
than is normally required and/or offered, but all you have really done
is given the general outline (again), only this time you added some
code you found. Not enough specifics.
Pretend I just stepped off the Excel boat and onto the promised land.
Convert me to your database-is-everything crusade. I'm still
impressionable, unlike that Excel goon Harlan. :)
aaron...@gmail.com
i dont believe that you or MS has any comprehension of the market.
i see VBS and VBA as _EXACTLY_ the same as vb.
i mean; they're what.. 10% different syntax?
at most?
it's just riduclous that you really think that newbie spreadsheet dorks
should learn perl, python..
you spreadsheet dorks should just lose the training wheels. that's all
im saying.
and there is nothing wrong with investing in vb6-- whether it be vbs or
vba or vb6.
i mean.. it's the best way to write functions.
functions that you can use in
word, excel, access, dts, asp-- you can use vb6-language for many many
things.
you can't reuse java functions in 10 different environments'
you can't reuse perl or python.. you cant' make a function and perl and
paste it into outlook
you can't do it.
i just think that it's funny that you're such an Excel bigot and yet
you dont know jack shit about using excel.
it's like.. kinda reminds me of how hitler was jewish and he was also
anti-jewish
i mean. what do you smoke for breakfast; anyways?
aaron...@gmail.com
excel dorks.
i'll make a better example tonight.
-aaron
Harlan Grove
>http://www.ma.utexas.edu/mpej/Vol/1/6.supp/Section.6/linear/minverse
>
>i'd translate this from java into vb or TSQL. and then use it in a
>database? i'd keep the function in one place and it would be hella easy
>to use.
Apparently you don't know Pascal code when you see it. Nor do you
recognize procedure calls that aren't built into the Pascal language so
would also need to be translated from other Pascal code. Looking
through the site to which you provided the link, how quickly would
anyone find the code for lmax, sone, squot, sprod and sdiff?
Also, you don't know that 'simple Gauss-Jordan' means *simple* in the
numerical sense, meaning trouble if you have nearly singular matrices
or several large/small values that could lead to overflow/underflow.
Next, it's built into Excel. You'd have to translate it. Since you
couldn't even identify the language, why should anyone believe you'd do
even a half-assed job translating the code into some language which you
claim to know?
As for write once, to repeat, it's built into Excel, so no need to
reinvent this wheel even via translation. Also, Excel's MINVERSE will
be able to invert more nearly singular matrices which will choke the
simple Gauss-Jordan code you provided. If you want some solid code, see
http://library.lanl.gov/numerical/bookcpdf/c2-3.pdf
If there were procedures I needed repeatedly, I'd write 'em once in VBA
and put them in an .XLA add-in. Then I could call those udfs from any
spreadsheet I use. Gosh! Code reuse in Excel! Whoda thunk?!
But you're missing the key point I made: the relative merits of
spreadsheets and databases are often found in their respective data
referencing features. Given the table I provided in my last post, which
I'll repeat here
Fld1__Fld2__Fld3__Fld4
-7__ -24___ -59___ 58
-78__ 65___ 56___ 22
59__ -60___ -31___ 47
35__ -21___ 10____ 1
how would you pass this matrix to a database udf? And how would the
code below, which uses the passed parameter m2 as the return value,
need to be modified to become a function returning a matrix result? How
would you convert that matrix result back into a table? Cursors?
Quite a few loose ends in your 'complete solution'.
Lonnie M.
As an employer, I don't believe that I would pay such a narrow-minded
agitator $8 dollars an hour. It would be refreshing to see you go one
post attempting to come up with something other than a four letter word
to emphasize your point. I doubt that you will change the manner in
which you communicate or the value you place on the right tools for the
right job--whether that be spreadsheets or 'novel' languages. That
is why we will always see you as a belligerent one-trick-pony.
Harlin, thank you for your positive contributions to the community
Regards--Lonnie M.
Harlan Grove
...
>a) i can do any math you can but faster
First you'd need to translate that Pascal code for inverting matrices,
no? Then you'd have to figure out the table-to-matrix and
matrix-to-table interface. Then as soon as you come across a nasty
nonsingular matrix, you'll need to go find someone else's matrix
inversion code (which you also won't understand), translate it, ensure
your table to udf interface works, then finally be able to start
performing the calculations I would have finished days before.
>b) im sick and tired of cutting and pasting the same formula 100 times per day
So sad.
>c) it's less efficient to have 200 copies of the same formula
> 1) sheer storage
> 2) accuracy
> 3) development of these 'super-complex spreadsheets (gag)'
...
You have a point about #1, but it's a trade off with flexibility. There
are times people use computers standalone. That requires some
redundancy.
As for #2, if it's the *same* formula, how would accuracy differ? Or do
you mean the possibility that inconsistencies may arise in spreadsheet
formulas? That's a real problem, but there are tools available that
sensible Excel users or developers should use to detect and fix it.
And with respect to #3, you've demonstrated that you don't really
understand anything more complicated than counting and summing. I'll be
generous and stipulate that you do a minimally competent job of writing
code implementing procedures for which you're given detailed specs by
people who do know more than grade school math.
Harlan Grove
...
>you are the asshole that is preaching the end of vb-- you started this
I started off only discussing the possible future existence of VB6.
You're the one who conflated that with VBA and VBS. Why don't you try
to stick with the original topic?
>statisitically significant seasonality.. HMMM... well i'd take the MSDE
>that ships with ACCESS (or is free from www.asp.net) and i'd use the
>stdev function
Gosh! All statistical analysis boils down to calculating standard
deviations! Whodda thunk? Apparently not all those Excel or SAS or S
Plus dweebs writing time series texts or wasting college and university
resources holding professorial chairs in statistics, quantitative
psychology or econometrics.
To get an idea how shallow your response is, take a peek at
http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514256042/html/x816.html
And for most business PC users, it won't matter that MSDE is free if
they don't already have it on their PCs and they're not allowed to
install nonapproved software.
Your responses remind me of the old joke about three
philosophers/mathematicians/etc in a whole figuring how they'd get out
of it. The first says, "Assume we have a ladder . . ."
aaron...@gmail.com
it's an easy conversion to vb is all i know
do you really allow people to tell you what kinda perms you have on
your machine?
again; i've told you this before.. maybe these people walk up to you
and see a computer dork so they dont give you perms.
i walk into contracts; and people give me sa/local admin without even
thinking twice. (i think that it has to do with my billrate lol)
aaron...@gmail.com
PLUS, MINUS, MULTIPLY AND DIVIDE.
aaron...@gmail.com
i mean.. i poop in 1m row row incremenets
what are you going to do when you need to SHARE this with another user?
email it to them?
what are you going to do when you hit the 2gb limit IN EXCEL? (i've
breached it; have you?)
Harlan Grove
>and just for the record; yes.. all math does realistically boil down to
>PLUS, MINUS, MULTIPLY AND DIVIDE.
So you calculate fractional powers and logarithms with power series
approximations?
Harlan Grove
>yeah.. but what are you gonig to do when you hit a measly 64k rows?
Since I limit myself to no more than 2000 rows in anything I design, doesn't
seem to be an issue.
>i mean.. i poop in 1m row row incremenets
Someday you may grow up & stop taking so much pride in your excreting
functions. But if you have nothing else to be proud of . . .
>what are you going to do when you need to SHARE this with another user?
>email it to them?
Nope. Use batch files to copy files to other offices' file servers into
prespecified locations. Also distribute documentation the same way. Then
send e-mail about the distribution to file servers.
>what are you going to do when you hit the 2gb limit IN EXCEL? (i've
>breached it; have you?)
I'm not foolish enough to get close to it. If I need to work with that much
data I use other software. That's you're foolish enough to have come close
to this limit only provides further evidence (if such were needed) that
you're clueless.
Harlan Grove
...
>do you really allow people to tell you what kinda perms you have on
>your machine?
If it's not 'my' machine, i.e., I didn't buy it & I don't own it, yes, I do
let the owner (my employer) set my user permissions. They kinda have the
right to do so, no?
>i walk into contracts; and people give me sa/local admin without even
>thinking twice. (i think that it has to do with my billrate lol)
Must be small companies so desperate for help that they'd even hire you.
Jay Petrulis
Still waiting for the better example. Care to back up your claim with
a specific and testable solution?
As I mentioned, I do not require any comparison to an Excel solution.
Assume that I only have Access installed. Just get the job done in
Access, please. Not an outline, not unfinished ideas. Not code that
you still have to translate. A working solution. As you claim, you
can do this much easier using a database than any Excel dork can, so a
detailed post should not take long, either.
Please do not use Harlan's suggestion of setting a reference to the
Excel object model. That is not a pure Access solution.
aaron...@gmail.com
if you could post on here without being a clueless MDB newbie; that
would help also
i dont need responses.
i need people to start speaking the TRUTH.
you guys slam DAP and ADP all day long. you slam VB.
if you dont want an argument; then you guys need to stop talking trash.
all im doing is giving you 10% of your own egocentricism back in your
face.
JakeyC
Unlike Mr. Toews, I note that you are neither valuable, nor
professional.
If your use of spreadsheets involves re-creating them several times a
week or 'copying and pasting' 100 times over, perhaps you should get
back to basics.
Press 'F1' on your keyboard, and type the word 'macro' into the speech
bubble that the cute animated assistant offers.
You may well learn something.
Oorang
are showing right this second) is screwing up your life.
Besides you have no idea what I do for a living. But I'll give you a hint.
One of them is devolop databases. I just happen to feel excel is less labor
intensive for a lot of things. I mean why go to all the trouble to use a
database and set things up manually when it's frequently all prebuilt and at
your fingertips.
Remeber the idea is to get the job done in a reasonable amount of time. Not
prove how smart you are. Or do the "optimum" solution. More over you CAN
email out reports from excel automaticlly you are just ignorant as to how.
Finally even if you email your database reports out, how pray tell would you
make them interactive without emailing out the entire database or setting up
access to said. This get's even more complicated if you have personal
offsite.
<aaron...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131524309....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> and just for the record; you trendy asshole
>
> just because there's more people doing it; it doesn't mean it's the
> right thing to do.
>
> that is why you are a disease. GROUPTHINK numbnuts.
>
> do you really believe that the sheer count of people has anything to do
> with what people should learn?
> i mean-- you idiots have been coasting for too fucking long
>
> and you aren't worth minimum wage.
>
> eat shit spreadsheet dipshit
>
> you can't crunch numbers better than i can
>
Oorang
thread in the group :-S
"Tony Toews" <tto...@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:7or4n11rl3rekm037...@4ax.com...
Tony Toews
>Gee I don't know about that Tony... This DOES seem to be the most active
>thread in the group :-S
<chuckle>
aaron...@gmail.com
spreadsheets; all spreadsheets-- involve cutting and pasting the same
formula 100 times.
-Aaron
dbah...@hotmail.com
SPREADSHEET DORKS SHOULD DIE A PAINFUL DEATH.
dbah...@hotmail.com
half of my work is fixing spreadsheet messes. the other half is fixing
MDB messes.
SQL Server is the answer to all your problems; you guys need to lose
the training wheels and start doing real dev.
i mean-- if you're going to write it; write it correctly the first time
instead of having a 2gb limit and crap performance
Harlan Grove
...
>spreadsheets; all spreadsheets-- involve cutting and pasting the same
>formula 100 times.
It's the spreadsheet equivalent of iteration.
What's the matter? Having some difficulty getting matrix inversion code
programmed in VBA?
Jay Petrulis
aaron...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> spreadsheets; all spreadsheets-- involve cutting and pasting the same
> formula 100 times.
>
You are right -- that is all that can be done with a spreadsheet. Very
good, Aaron.
However, why are you still discussing spreadsheets at this point in the
thread? *You* were going to offer a solution to Harlan's matrix
challenge without using Excel. You would be able to show some
competency with databases, rather than just talk about how good you
are.
I, for one, am still waiting for your solution.
Harlan Grove
>just for the record; no i dont get any specs; i deliver solutions
Oh, so you prey on small companies that don't really have a clear idea
why they've hired you.
How's the matrix inversion coding going?
aaron...@gmail.com
fuck yourself.
go and play with your spreadsheets, little script kiddie
i choose the best tools for the job
and i'd rather a cup of bloody boogers than use Excel in the real world
for anything.
you're the one-trick pony.. i mean.. what are you going to do; make a
spreadsheet of all the people that swear in a newsgroup and block me??
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HIT 64K ROWS, KID?
-Aaron
aaron...@gmail.com
if you really are stupid enough to think that i dont know what a macro
is-- i mean.. maybe you should just stop posting on usenet.
i mean-- come on; i've written hundreds and thousands of pages of vba
in excel and probably 10,000 pages of vba code for access.
i know vba like the back of my hand.
i use one consistent language across outlook; word; excel and access; i
use one language for ASP and for DTS and SQL jobs.
what does harlan do?
HE MAKES THE SAME FRIGGIN SPREADSHEET WEEK IN AND WEEK OUT.
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to automate excel and make it half as efficient as
Access.
MSDE is a free engine; you guys should be using MSDE for everything you
do instead of excel
i mean.. ACCESS DATA PROJECTs rock
and mdb and spreadsheets are for babies.
LITTLE GIRLIE-MEN use excel
Harlan Grove
>i know vba like the back of my hand.
But you never post any VBA code to newsgroups to show off your
*claimed* but unsubstantiated VBA coding brilliance.
Google Groups search on newsgroup * from author aaron.kempf containing
the phrase 'End Function' - none of the 3 threads found showed any VBA
code from you. Switching to the phrase 'End Sub' showed 1 of 3 matching
threads with this contribution from you.
Public Sub CaptureExcelValues()
Dim xlApp
Dim wb
Dim ws
set xlApp = createobject("EXCEL.APPLICATION")
set wb = xlApp.workbooks.open("c:\myspreadsheet.xls")
set ws = wb.sheets("MyHappySheetName")
then you can just do anything that you want with it.
End Sub
Hardly original, hardly complicated. And you never followed up with the
OP when it was clear your response didn't get the OP anywhere close to
what s/he needed.
(or http://makeashorterlink.com/?M5BA2382C ).
>what does harlan do?
>
>HE MAKES THE SAME FRIGGIN SPREADSHEET WEEK IN AND WEEK OUT.
>IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to automate excel and make it half as efficient as
>Access.
...
This is your constant claim. Because *YOU* know nothing more than
recreating spreadsheets day after day (someday you may get one right,
accidents can happen), you claim that's what *I* do. You have no clue
what I do.
>LITTLE GIRLIE-MEN use excel
I'll leave it up to others to figure out what to call people like you
who claim database expertise and the ability to do ANYTHING Excel can
do in either VBA or Access or SQL Server but just can't seem to figure
out how to prove it. Loudmouth, ignoramus and bullshitter aren't
inappropriate, but they're inadequate to sum up the full extent of your
militant ignorance.
Harlan Grove
...
>you're the one-trick pony.. i mean.. what are you going to do; make a
>spreadsheet of all the people that swear in a newsgroup and block me??
No one in their right mind would dream of blocking you. No matter how
ignorant and misanthropic the rest of us may be, we can read your posts
and realize we've still a long ways to go before we'd reach your level.
It's a testament to your, er, character that there's no limit to how
low you'll go. Keep on impressing the rest of us!
aaron...@gmail.com
so you measure my brilliance based on how many threads i have with end
function, huh?
END FUNCTION
i'll end your function spreadsheet dork
Harlan Grove
>hahaha good stuff harlan
>
>so you measure my brilliance based on how many threads i have with end
>function, huh?
Actually, I measure your credibility by the quantity of VB[|A|S] code
you've posted. Minimal code, so minimal credibility.
Do you know how to do anything other than rant?
BTW, how's the matrix inversion coding going? Need some help?
dbah...@hotmail.com
hahaha
no i develop small apps on a small budget and i do a damn good job
i couldn't find the UDF i was looking for; all i know is that
subqueries are about 100 times more powerful than anything that excel
can do
so go and play with your little barbies kids
YAY let's play with perl and python and excel
(i'll have a chance to do the inversion thing soon)
Harlan Grove
...
>(i'll have a chance to do the inversion thing soon)
More unsubstantiated blather. You've already spent a chunk of time
since last Friday making these signature responses of yours, but
apparently no time on what you claim would be so easy to do. Some
people may begin to believe you know squat all.
aaron...@gmail.com
just for the record; im not a programmer; im db folk
and i eat spreadsheet dorks like you for breakfast
and btw, how is you report against 66k rows?
rofl
what you gonna do when you hit the 64k limit, harlan?
i'll find a function that does this magic math you talk about.. i
mean-- it's NOT rocketscience
Harlan Grove
>just for the record; im not a programmer; im db folk
>and btw, how is you report against 66k rows?
You seem to need repetition, not that it's likely to work: I DON'T
PRODUCE REPORTS. I use a few canned spreadsheet templates that combine
some time series forecasting with discounted cashflow analysis, and a
few others that read in output from external simulation programs
(.EXEs). I maintain a few others for use by field office users
(including myself) that are little more than simple UIs for
interpolating various factors from table lookups. None of these use
more than 3000 rows.
I'll repeat: use the best tool for the task. Managing tens of thousands
of records isn't something spreadsheets do well, and I don't misuse
spreadsheets for that sort of thing. If you do, that's your problem.
>what you gonna do when you hit the 64k limit, harlan?
Since I never will (since I won't misuse spreadsheets for the type of
data that spans that many records), moot point.
>i'll find a function that does this magic math you talk about.. i
>mean-- it's NOT rocketscience
No, not rocket science, but anything more than counting your fingers
and toes (and your written records in newsgroups suggests you're one of
the lucky inbred few with more than 10 and 10) seems to take you a LONG
TIME to figure out.
Since I'm getting tired of waiting, I'll help you out. Since you've
proven you can't recognize Pascal, I'm going to assume you're only
competent in BASIC. Here's a link to a PDF (no doubt more bitching &
griping to come) showing some old style BASIC code (with LINE NUMBERS)
showing a workable procedure.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~wkahan/MathH110/gji.pdf
Perhaps you're competent to translate BASICA into VBA (unproven, so
surprise me). The devil's still going to be in reading source matrices
from DBMS tables and writing result matrices back to DBMS tables.
aaron...@gmail.com
you make the same friggin spreadsheet week in and week out
sure you change some numbers
it just would be much mroe efficient to automate it with a real program
spreadsheets are for girlie-men and perl and python aren't the answer
to your problems.
fine.. screw microsoft; use crystal reports and mysql for all i care.
all i know is that you sit there and make the same-- or similiar
spreadsheets all the time.
and it would be in YOUR best interests to start doing things with VALUE
instead of throwing time and money at copy and pastedom
http://www.fmsinc.com/tpapers/genaccess/DBOD.asp
---------------
Millions of databases are created in Excel spreadsheets each year, but
only a tiny percentage "graduate" to the next level: Access.
Similarly, only a tiny percentage of Access applications graduate to a
more sophisticated solution. In the interim, a huge number of database
needs are solved completely by Access. Access is simply the best at
what it does.
An IT manager needs to understand and use Access tactically, and
anticipates that some Access applications migrate over time. This is
not an indictment on Access, but rather the natural process of database
evolution as business needs change. Sure, it would have been better to
build that Access application with a more sophisticated platform from
the beginning, but it was impossible to predict it would be that
important when it was first created. Similarly, is it possible to
predict which 2% of databases created this year need to migrate three
years from now? Most will run perfectly fine in Access forever or go
extinct. Making a big investment today makes no sense when a simpler,
less risky Access solution is possible. Let time determine which
databases evolve and require additional investment to take them to the
next level. The key is to anticipate this.
Even when Access applications evolve to another platform, Access scales
by supporting the migration of Jet to SQL Server while preserving the
application development investment. The features developed for Access
can be rolled into the new platform guaranteeing the success of the new
system (or at least minimizing end-user objections). In that case,
Access proved to be a great prototype.
The savvy IT manager learns when Access is effective and when it's
not. If it can be done in Access, the ROI is superior to alternate
technologies. Taking advantage of the strengths of Access gives your
organization a significant competitive advantage both financially and
in response to user, market, and customer conditions.
aaron...@gmail.com
'oh no, you need to handle multi-dimensinal sources'
im the king of multidimensional asshole
you can't even do real pivotTables kid
Harlan Grove
>i call bullshit on that
So much easier than figuring out how to deal with my challenge.
>you make the same friggin spreadsheet week in and week out
No, you only claim I do. You know nothing about what I do, and I know
you do nothing useful. But you do seem to claim a lot!
>sure you change some numbers
You. That's what templates are for. Perform the same calculations on
different sets of numbers. You may finally be beginning to figure out
what spreadsheets can do. Progress, unless of course you fail to grasp
that this is what spreadsheets do well.
>it just would be much mroe efficient to automate it with a real program
So entering a few hundred strings and numbers in a database form rather
than into a worksheet form? Hard to see much of a difference there. You
probably need to be reminded that most of the data I work with comes
from customers, so I get it from e-mail. It's not in any of my
company's databases, so no matter how powerful their query facilities,
if the data ain't there, they ain't gonna fetch it.
And *AS* I'm entering the data in a worksheet, some of the calculations
update in real time. And I don't have to run anything when I've
completed data entry. the calculations are already done. I'd have to
click a button or run a menu command in a database form to indicate
that I'd completed data entry, and then it'd make me wait as it churned
through the calculations.
>fine.. screw microsoft; use crystal reports and mysql for all i care.
Still inappropriate tools for what I do. Again, I DON'T PRODUCE
REPORTS. It must be sad having to work with reports all the time, but
maybe you don't mind drudgery.
>all i know is that you sit there and make the same-- or similiar
>spreadsheets all the time.
I perform similar calculations most days. That's the nature of most
jobs: doing the same thing repeatedly. In my case, the bulk of my job
could be described as forecasting. Given the nature of my company's
products (financial services), there's a fairly narrow set of
calculations that are pertinent (though there's ongoing research into
refinement and alternative approaches). So, yes, highly repetitive. So
is econometric forecasting. Or tax accounting.
As for making spreadsheets, I use canned templates. Yes, that means I
save many different workbooks that share the same formulas. I also
share many of those workbooks with different coworkers in my own and
other field offices, and none of those coworkers has Access (or an
account on any of the company's RDBMSs). Mind telling me how they'd get
anything useful if they have no database front-end to use?
>and it would be in YOUR best interests to start doing things with VALUE
>instead of throwing time and money at copy and pastedom
...
An opinion founded on militant ignorance. If copy & paste is the most
efficient form of data entry, it's be foolish not to use it. If you
mean creating new workbook models, then it's still a rather efficient
way to deal with propagating similar calculations. As I've mentioned
before, formula copy & paste is the spreadsheet form of iteration.
>Millions of databases are created in Excel spreadsheets each year, but
>only a tiny percentage "graduate" to the next level: Access.
...
So you believe all spreadsheet models are just database applications?
More evidence that your perspective is extremely limited, and that
you're so ignorant you can't realize how little you know.
I don't dispute that Excel is often misused as a database. I do dispute
that I misuse it so, and you can keep on claiming I do, but that won't
make it so.
And until you *PROVE* otherwise, there's considerable and mounting
evidence that you can't figure out how to program elementary matrix
operations, thus disproving your claim that *YOU* can do anything in
Access that I can do in Excel. [Yes, I do, implicitly, invert matrices
several times a day as part of LINEST and LOGEST function calls.]
You might want to reconsider your relative priorities between
frequently responding with your normal vacuous rants and spending some
time figuring out my challenge. Throw a challenge at me if you want.
Even something involving more than 65536 rows. I may need to use
multiple worksheets, but I'll come up with an answer for you a lot
quicker than you've managed to answer me - still waiting after 5 days.
aaron...@gmail.com
you're a frigging idiot and you make the exact same spreadsheet 3 times
a week.
eat shit and get a real job and go and play with your python and perl
you wimp
i mean-- there are better ways to do your job that with excel..
i would reccommend using paper and pencil instead of excel
Harlan Grove
>i can write matrices and read matrices all the time
So it'd be easy for you to show a stub VBA function, taking a query and
a destination table reference as arguments, running the query,
converting the resulting table to a VBA array, passing that array as an
argument to a placeholder matrix inversion function, then writing the
resulting array to the destination table. You can provide the matrix
inversion code later. Just wow us with your interface function as soon
as practicable. Surely you must have one lying around some place. Just
copy & paste it into a response. That can't be too difficult for you?
>im the king of multidimensional asshole
I can't dispute this. Far be it from me to suggest you have no grasp of
grammar, so it must be the case that you reign supreme over your
multidimensional backside. That's where your brain (such as it is) is
located too, no?
Harlan Grove
>hey im not claiming anything
>
>you're a frigging idiot and you make the exact same spreadsheet 3 times
>a week.
I see. Since you know exactly what I do, you should be able to provide
the filenames of the most recent 3 identical spreadsheets I've saved.
Go ahead and let whe world know their filenames.
>i mean-- there are better ways to do your job that with excel..
>i would reccommend using paper and pencil instead of excel
So that's how you'd try to do my job? That you can't even figure out
the benefits of Excel as a n ad hoc calculator seems to sum up the full
extent of your practicality and the depth of your, er, wisdom.
aaron...@gmail.com
you're sooooo cute
i mean.. just because we're both slinging mud at each other; it doesn't
mean you shoudl try to attack me.
you see; im a programmer; i make six figures and i have work coming out
of my ears.
you're a worthless spreadsheet dork that should be living on the
streets.
do you honestly think that learning perl and python are in the best
interests of excel dorks?
i mean seriously.. what's the point-- the most practical language to
learn is VB6 / VBA.
im sorry that MS is too drunk to support their existing, current
programming languages.
but you guys are sitting around; without a hope in the world. and you
really think that your math is too hard for my FREE databases?
grow up harlan; lose the training wheels.
im sorry that you work for a company that is too cheap to give you MS
access. i mean-- it IS the most popular database in the world; and you
kids sit around and make the same damn xls week in and week out
it's like.. grow the hell up; either use crystal or Access or stop
crunching numbers.
Harlan Grove
...
>do you honestly think that learning perl and python are in the best
>interests of excel dorks?
>i mean seriously.. what's the point-- the most practical language to
>learn is VB6 / VBA.
VB6, no. VBA yes.
For cleansing data in text files, nothing is better than Perl. A Perl
command line script under 80 characters can do more than Excel or most
databases to fix most common data formatting headaches. So, yes, I'd
recommend learning simple Perl scripts for anyone who wants to avoid
having to use VBA to run procedures that'd have to process text files
via Open/Line Input, Print #/Close.
Python isn't as compact, and its regular expression syntax isn't as
comprehensive as that of Perl, but may people find it easier to use.
For those who just can't stand Perl (and there are plenty of them),
Python is the most reasonable alternative.
BTW, check this out.
Leads me to wonder who in their right mind wastes time with VBScript.
>im sorry that MS is too drunk to support their existing, current
>programming languages.
You don't get it. VB6, like Office 97, was good enough that too many
people haven't upgraded. Solution? Spread FUD among corporate IT buyers
that managed code and .Net are necessities. Get 'em to upgrade. In 4 or
5 years Microsoft will unveil another Great New Paradigm when too many
programmers start to believe Visual Studio 2005 is good enough not to
need to upgrade.
Microsoft isn't irrational (but an irrational fool such as you can't be
expected to understand this). They just place a much higher priority on
revenues and profits than on the quality of their software. If quality
is required to sell product, they'll improve the quality of their code,
but that's necessarily a last resort compared to adding new features
that introduce new bugs but give their marketing department much more
to work with.
>but you guys are sitting around; without a hope in the world. and you
>really think that your math is too hard for my FREE databases?
...
Seems to be. Where's your code, genius? Unclear on the concept PUT UP
OR SHUT UP?
>it's like.. grow the hell up; either use crystal or Access or stop
>crunching numbers.
If only it were possible to do anything slightly complicated using
either. Until you show us the way, I'll be stuck believing Access is
capable of little more than counting and summing. I do believe
databases make good storage subsystems, but they're just not up to
serious analysis. And you're not up to figuring out the difference
between analysis and report generation.
Lonnie M.
Aaron, The fact that you would even ask the question regarding 65,536
rows, just goes to show your ignorance. Like, I said the right tool for
the right job... By the way when I hit 64K rows I would still have
1,536 to go!
I will use access, mysql, sas, oracle, notepad, or even crayons and
construction paper! Whatever serves my needs the best, but when you
make statements like "[I would never use] Excel in the real world"
-- it kind of makes you out to be the "One Trick Pony". You
obviously are not a professional, because you clearly do not understand
the needs of the "Real World", or customers in the "Real
World". You can pretend that "Real World" only needs what you are
endorsing, but you are wrong. Chances are you are the "Kiddie"
here, judging by the immaturity of your responses. And the verdict is
still out on whether or not you are the "Script Kiddie".
Go get them tiger, the whole world is against you, but you know that
you are right! So, keep striking out in angst -- you really are a sad,
sad boy.
aaron...@gmail.com
HOW ABOUT ACCESS ASS-MUNCH?
how about VISUAL BASIC?
wouldn't you rather know ONE language than a dozen?
I mean-- you can use ONE language for excel macros, outlook macros,
access macros, etl in DTS.. you can use ONE language for everything you
need to do from server-side scripting to clientside scripting..
I mean-- gag me with a spoon, harlan.
so sorry that I got the 65536 limit confused with the 64k limit of
childen in a level (for real pivotTables).. sue me
Access doesn't have those types of limits; so i just consider anything
to do with Excel as being inferior for my needs.
and again, Harlan. you can sit there with your cush job and drive your
BMW.. and you can pretend that you're VALUABLE because you are an
'analyst'.
I call hogwash on your ass; all you do is crunch numbers; and you do it
poorly. I mean.. you sit there and copy and paste the same formulas
1000 times. what happens when you need to change a calculation?
you open up a dozen spreadsheets and change the formula in about 10,000
different places
it's just a waste of time
i eat excel dorks like you for breakfast
Harlan Grove
>for cleansing things in text files, nothign works better than PERL?
>
>HOW ABOUT ACCESS ASS-MUNCH?
How? By importing into multiple fields and praying that the result
isn't too badly screwed up? Or importing into a single-field table,
cleansing using SELECT queries, then splitting into fields using
another SELECT query? That's easy?!
>how about VISUAL BASIC?
BASIC, including Visual Basic, sucks for text processing. And you mean
using Open, Line Input, Print # and Close statements? Again, that's
easy?!!
Try these 2 CSV-like records where comma is usually the field
separator, but currency values include comma formatting, in which case
the leading and trailing field separators are comma-space sequences.
123,456, 789,012.00, xyz
abc,999, 5.37, 23
I have to deal with text files like this on a regular basis. All it
takes using Perl is the command line script
perl -pe "while (s/( [-+\d]+),(\d)/$1$2/) { ; }" raw.csv > cleansed.csv
and if I want to remove the spaces after the commas,
perl -pe "while (s/( [-+\d]+),(\d)/$1$2/) { ; }; s/, /,/g;" raw.csv >
cleansed.csv
Yes, you do have to learn regular expressions to get the most out of
Perl, but the investment pays off quickly.
>wouldn't you rather know ONE language than a dozen?
Not if that one language were any form of BASIC.
>I mean-- you can use ONE language for excel macros, outlook macros,
>access macros, etl in DTS.. you can use ONE language for everything you
>need to do from server-side scripting to clientside scripting..
...
More add-on software: DTS.
Maybe if all users had a terabyte of additional software at an
incremental cost of $10,000 or more per seat, then maybe there'd be
less reason to use Excel.
Then again, maybe you should try to view things from a REAL WORLD
perspective. (Yeah, that'll happen!)
And it seems VBS is widely deployed only in your dreams, so client or
server side there'd need to be at least one more language.
>Access doesn't have those types of limits; so i just consider anything
>to do with Excel as being inferior for my needs.
...
Note: **YOUR** *NEEDS*. Not **MY** *NEEDS*, nor in all likelihood
anyone else's needs. **YOU** don't like using Excel. Fine. Don't use
it. No one is forcing you to use it. If you want to use Access (and a
few dozen additional software packages you seem the have difficulty
distinguishing from Access), go ahead. But most other users, at least
not the ones in the newsgroups you pollute with your presence, won't
find it useful.
>I call hogwash on your ass; all you do is crunch numbers; and you do it
>poorly. I mean.. you sit there and copy and paste the same formulas
>1000 times. what happens when you need to change a calculation?
>
>you open up a dozen spreadsheets and change the formula in about 10,000
>different places
Macros. Every workbook template (loosely defined) I write has a
distinct hidden defined name. I have a batch update workbook that uses
a common set of macros and a description of fixes entered in its sole
worksheet. The worksheet starts off with the distinct name of the
template it's intended to fix and the drive/directory path in which to
search for files (recursing through subdirectories) followed by a blank
row followed by a table (yes, a table) with fields for worksheet name
(or blank for workbook-level defined names), range address or defined
name, and replacement formula as literal text (R1C1 for cell formulas,
A1 for defined names). The macros search through the specified
directory, using ExecuteExcel4Macro to fetch the distinct name. If it
matches the distinct name sought, it opens the workbook and iterates
through the table replacing the formulas for the specified defined
names or ranges with the replacement formulas.
I know batch processing is old-fashioned, but it works for me.
>it's just a waste of time
...
Well, if you don't understand batch processing, I suppose it might seem
so. But I don't see why anyone else should limit themselves to the few
(the very few) tools you seem to know.
dbah...@hotmail.com
you really are on crack
i can parse whatever you can; only easier.
and i DONT know any products that cost $10,000 per seat. Analysis
Services ships free with SQL Server standard edition which is like $6k
per processor.
one olap servers to go for 100 excel dorks like yourself so you can
have 'real pivot tables'.
Excel isn't free.
Excel is a disease; and im sorry that management at your company are
lepers. they are infected.
there is only one place for you harlan; and all spreadsheet dorks like
you.. living on a street; drinking wine out of a brown paper bag.
that is where your career is heading.. you guys 'choose not to
participate' in some of the most exciting things to ever happen in the
computer industry.
spreadsheets didn't allow amazon.com
spreadsheets dont run gmail
spreadsheets dont run ebay
i just think that you're whacked in the head, harlan
spreadsheets are for girlie men like yourself
i mean.. what are you going to do when you hit the 65536 limit? lol
gag me with a spoon; i mean-- this isn't 1994 anymore
Harlan Grove
...
>i can parse whatever you can; only easier.
OK, given my 2 record example, show how you'd eliminate the commas in the
currency fields or import 4 fields in each record into a database table.
Maybe you're up to that challenge since matrix inversion is beyond your
capabilities (minimal as they are).
Jay Petrulis
*********************************
gag him with a spoon harlan.
i mean seriously, only two lines? what happens when you hit 64k lines?
aaron uses gmail and that is run on more than two lines of code. your
challenge is for girlie spreadsheet dorks.
grow up kid and use a real VB IDE -- Access
i mean get real aaron's MSDE install (free with windows basically) is
all set and he's done.
harlan, you spreadsheet kiddies build the same report every week. i
mean c'mon you can't analyze data better than aaron can
excel is a disease.
...blah, blah, blah
***********************************
Or something like that.
Aaron, prove everybody wrong on this one:
a) offer a solution
b) without a rant
aaron...@gmail.com
cartesians there's not a damn thing i cant do
Harlan Grove
>ok i will. just a coupel of dlookups (or subqueries) and a couple of
>cartesians there's not a damn thing i cant do
Just a few acronyms and some jargon, and there's nothing you can't
**CLAIM** to do.
Still no evidence that you actually know how to do anything other than
rant.
If 2 records isn't enough for you, randomly generate some. In Excel,
I'd do this using formulas like so: press [F5], enter A1:A10000, press
[Enter], then type the formula
=IF(RAND()<0.7,CHAR(65+26*RAND()),CHAR(48+10*RAND()))
&IF(RAND()<0.7,CHAR(65+26*RAND()),CHAR(48+10*RAND()))
&IF(RAND()<0.7,CHAR(65+26*RAND()),CHAR(48+10*RAND()))&","
&TEXT(1000*RAND(),"000")&", "&TEXT(10000000*RAND(),"#,##0.00")&", "
&LEFT(IF(RAND()<0.7,CHAR(65+26*RAND()),CHAR(48+10*RAND()))
&IF(RAND()<0.7,CHAR(65+26*RAND()),CHAR(48+10*RAND()))
&IF(RAND()<0.7,CHAR(65+26*RAND()),CHAR(48+10*RAND())),INT(1+3*RAND()))
and press [Ctrl]+[Enter]. There'd be 10,000 records in the perverse
format I mentioned. Note: no copy & paste.
Show *IN* *DETAIL* the steps you'd take to create a DBMS table from
this data with 4 fields, the first and last text, the second integer
and the third floating point or fixed point with 2 decimal places.
This doesn't involve dlookups or cartesians, genius. Just removing
unwanted commas embedded in the third field of some but not all
records. This is a simple text transformation exercise (a Perl
one-liner as I've already shown). Show us, *WITH* *DETAILS*, how easy
it is using either plain Access, VBA or, if you're at a loss using
those, SQL Server DTS.
Jay Petrulis
aaron...@gmail.com wrote:
> ok i will. just a coupel of dlookups (or subqueries) and a couple of
> cartesians there's not a damn thing i cant do
You've got to be kidding. All these posts with specific questions for
you, plus explicit requests to provide details and this is what you
reply? Wow!
This should be quite embarrassing, yet you keep going. You are in a
deep hole and still you keep digging.
aaron...@gmail.com
im not the one that spends week in and week out building the same damn
spreadsheet
you guys are in a hole
i can do this; i just have a fulltime job and a bunch of contracting
thigns on the side; and 3 kids to deal with at home.. i dont have a ton
of time to look into this; but i will try this weekend (in between
clients)
i haven't ever had any math in the db world that is even challenging; i
mean.. sum this sum that
none of it is slightly challenging
i took 3 semesters of college calc 15 years ago; i know i can do this
all i know is that subqueries and views and user-defined functions are
more powerful than copying and pasting formulas around.
i know it and you guys are crazy for not seeing the light
Harlan Grove
>haha im not in a hole
Quite so. You *are* a hole, an metaphysical absence of anything
remotely associated with intellect. Then there are the holes in your
head, more and larger than those normal humans possess.
>i can do this; i just have a fulltime job and a bunch of contracting
>thigns on the side; and 3 kids to deal with at home.. i dont have a ton
>of time to look into this; but i will try this weekend (in between
>clients)
Excuses. I already gave you an out: start off by showing code which you
must *already* have to convert a table of, say, 4 records and 4 fields
of double precision floating point numbers into a VBA array perhaps
named SourceArray, then a stub function call like
ResultArray = MatrixInverseStillToBeWritten(SourceArray)
then create a new DBMS table from ResultArray. Someone who claims to be
such an expert at Access, DBMSs in general and VBA must have written
such procedures before. Do you lack access to the code?
You've claimed that you can do any calculations in Access or VBA that I
can do in Excel, and you've claimed you can do them faster. It seems
the only small chink in this edifice of calculation proficiency you've
proclaimed for yourself is writing the code needed to reinvent Excel's
existing functionality. So if you're as good at VBA as you've claimed
you are, but you can't provide a working solution after a whole week,
what chance would anyone who's never programmed in BASIC or any other
procedural or OO language have writing code to get Access to do what
Excel can do out of the box?
You don't see any defects in your arguments to date?!
>i haven't ever had any math in the db world that is even challenging; i
>mean.. sum this sum that
Yup. That's what databases are good at: summing, counting,
categorizing. They're not really meant for linear algegraic operations.
Neither is VBA. [If only Microsoft would add the MAT statements from
PowerBASIC or TrueBASIC.]
>none of it is slightly challenging
>
>i took 3 semesters of college calc 15 years ago; i know i can do this
Oh, certainly. Why anyone can write robust numerical code. They just
won't take as long as you seem to need.
All you need to do is translate existing code into VBA. However, since
you apparently don't know any other languages, and there's a dearth of
VB[A] matrix inversion routines on the web, you're screwed. So much for
VB[A] being the only language you need to know.
Wassa madda, you couldn't even figure out the BASICA code to which I
posted a link in
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.access/msg/f81e6c06cb50add0
?!
>all i know is that subqueries and views and user-defined functions are
>more powerful than copying and pasting formulas around.
For counting, summing and categorizing, sure. For inverting matrices or
generating all permutations of sets of distinct tokens, no way. No
single software tool or language is any more universally appropriate
for any & all applications than any single hand-held tool is
universally appropriate for any & all woodworking tasks. You know how
to use a hammer, and you think your hammer is a better saw,
screwdriver, drill, . . .
>i know it and you guys are crazy for not seeing the light
The light you see is the train coming at you in the dark tunnel into
which you've blundered.
aaron...@gmail.com
i mean seriously here.. is your math 'magic math'
are you harry potter?
friggin idiot
I can generate permutations easier than you. it's called a CARTESIAN.
I'm not the one that sees that one tool fits the need for everything.
you're the spreadsheet dork that uses spreadsheets for EVERYTHING
you sit around and build the same damn XLS week in and week out.
I'm not the one that uses a one-size fits all mentality.
YOU ARE HARLAN.
and when stuff doesn't fit your peachy little app you run out and use
PERL and PYTHON?
fucking idiot use VBA / VBS / VB6
aaron...@gmail.com
i mean-- seriously harlan.. what are you looking for 'yes, you are
right.. databases can't handle arrays'
fucking idiot.
spreadsheets can't handle arrays buddy
databases handle 2-dimensional stuff just fine.. and everything you've
ever touched is 2-dimensional by definition..
if you really want the heavy math; you do OLAP
i mean. .it's got a lot more functions that you spreadsheet dorks are
familiar with
Harlan Grove
>ALL MATH IS SUMMING, CATEGORIZING DIPSHIT
Not completely inaccurate. Using sign change, subtraction can be
achieved via summing. Multiplication of a multiplicand by an integer
multiplier is just repeated addition, so can also be achieved via
summing. Division can also be reduced to summing, but that gets messy.
Once you have the 4 basic operations, you can use power series to
approximate exponentiation and logarithms, and there you have all the
operations you need.
Heck, read a book on Goedel's proof and you can see that addition can
be reduced to counting.
It's just grossly inefficient.
>i mean seriously here.. is your math 'magic math'
...
Nope. But what I know how to do is obviously outside your competence.
>I can generate permutations easier than you. it's called a CARTESIAN.
SHOW US. Yes, if you have n distinct tokens, you just need to take the
n-fold cartesian product of that set and weed out all nodes in which
one or more of the tokens is repeated, so reducing the n^n nodes to the
n! permutations.
Again, it's just grossly inefficient.
>I'm not the one that sees that one tool fits the need for everything.
No?
>you're the spreadsheet dork that uses spreadsheets for EVERYTHING
>you sit around and build the same damn XLS week in and week out.
So how do I use Excel to run my Perl code?
So far in all the threads in which we've, er, discussed the relative
merits of Excel and Access I've posted more SQL than you've posted SQL
or VBA. That going to change any time in this millenium?
>I'm not the one that uses a one-size fits all mentality.
Gee, I use databases when they make the most sense (to me). I use
spreadsheets when they make the most sense. I use commandline and batch
tools when they make the most sense. I'll admit that I have access to
more commandline tools than most Excel or Access users, so that's O/T
in these newsgroups (other than to perforate your arguments).
You're the one who keeps on ranting ACCESS, ACCESS, ACCESS.
>and when stuff doesn't fit your peachy little app you run out and use
>PERL and PYTHON?
For things like text processing and transforamtion, yup, I use Perl (or
sed or awk when I'm lazy). I also use batch files when they make the
most sense to me.
>fucking idiot use VBA / VBS / VB6
Why would I want to become as hopelessly a single trick pony as you?
Since I already know VBA (and don't have VB6), what possible benefit is
there not to learn any other language?
Harlan Grove
>and you REALLY think that arrays are that complex?
Apparently they're sufficiently complicated that you haven't been able
to whip up the requested VBA procedure in a week's time. So, no,
they're not complex for me, but there's no evidence to suggest that
they're not too complex for you.
>i mean-- seriously harlan.. what are you looking for 'yes, you are
>right.. databases can't handle arrays'
No. I'm pretty sure that a competent programmer could handle arrays in
databases. But I'm not at all convinced you can.
>spreadsheets can't handle arrays buddy
Really?! I inverted the array I posted in my challence to you last week
before I posted. Seems like Excel can handle that bit of array
processing. You don't seem to be able to, but just because Aaron is
either to ignorant or too stupid to manage it in Access or VBA doesn't
mean that there aren't thousands of high school kids that could.
>databases handle 2-dimensional stuff just fine.. and everything you've
>ever touched is 2-dimensional by definition..
Sure. Whatever you say.
>if you really want the heavy math; you do OLAP
If you (1) have access to OLAP software, and (2) want to waste the time
needed to set up your data in OLAP. And I didn't happen to see any
mention of a matrix inversion function in Microsoft online
documentation for MDX. Care to provide a link?
>i mean. .it's got a lot more functions that you spreadsheet dorks are
>familiar with
And you're not familiar with.
Yes, I'm sure it can do a lot. I'm just not convinced you can do
anything more than rant. You haven't exactly demonstrated any other
competence.
aaron...@gmail.com
SHOW US. Yes, if you have n distinct tokens, you just need to take the
n-fold cartesian product of that set and weed out all nodes in which
one or more of the tokens is repeated, so reducing the n^n nodes to the
n! permutations.
ok.
1) you have a table called N1 that has the numbers from 1 to 100
2) you have a table called N2 that has the numbers from 1 to 100
if you want to cartesian these two tables; to make every possible
combination; all you need to do is
SELECT N1.N AS N1, N2.N AS N2 FROM N1, N2
this will give you a nice little combination of every possible
combination for N1 and N2.
all you have to do is 'forget to write a join' and you get a cartesian.
which.. doesn't seem all THAT cool.
but pretend I have a years table and a months table.
Select Y.YYYY, M.MMM FROM tblYEAR Y, tblMONTH M
This would give you a nice little 'spreadsheet' of every combination of
years and months.
you could still filter it. you could still say 'give me all the months
for years 2003, 2004, 2005 by adding a simple where clause.
I'll look at the whole determinant thing this weekend; i dont have jack
shit for freetime right now; it's the oldest sons' bday.. i can't
believe he's nine already.. i mean WOW where does the time go?
-aaron
Harlan Grove
...
>1) you have a table called N1 that has the numbers from 1 to 100
>2) you have a table called N2 that has the numbers from 1 to 100
>
>if you want to cartesian these two tables; to make every possible
>combination; all you need to do is
>
>SELECT N1.N AS N1, N2.N AS N2 FROM N1, N2
>
>this will give you a nice little combination of every possible
>combination for N1 and N2.
Which in your example gives 10000 combinations. There are only 9900
permutations of 100 distinct numbers, 9900 = 100 * 99 = 100! / 99! /
1!, or 100 choose 2. You could add a WHERE clause specifying that N1
not equal N2 to get all permutations of 2 items drawn from 100 items.
Very good. That's permutations of 2 items. How about complete
permutations, i.e., permutations of all 100 distinct numbers? That
get's messy using your approach. Do you generate the permutations
incrementally, requiring 99 different queries with the one above
converted into an INSERT query to generate a table named NT2, and the
permutations of 3 items given by
SELECT TN2.N1, TN2.N2, N1.N AS N3 FROM TN2, N1
WHERE ((TN2.N1 <> N3) AND (TN2.N2 <> N3))
Writing 99 queries in which all clauses keep growing isn't exactly
simple, but it'd work. It also isn't efficient. It's at least
O(N!*N^2). The generator formula approach I provided several months ago
is O((N+1)!*log(N)). And storagewise, I only need one cell for each
item in each of the permutations. Your approach (rather the one I've
extrapolated from your faulty 2 item beginning), even if intermediate
tables were deleted after each cartesian the final cartesian would use
TN99 to generate TN100, with TN99 having 99! records of 99 fields each
(9.24*10^157) and TN100 having 100! records of 100 fields each
(9.33*10^159).
Now all the computers in all the world at the current time couldn't
even generate all these permutations, so it's a moot point for N = 100.
FWIW, N = 12, TN11 would have a mere 439 million entries and TN12 just
5.75 billion. And it'd only take your approach 69 billion compares to
achieve it. My generator formulas would require only 6.7 billion
compares. OLAP may be good, but it's not good enough to offset that
differential.
>Select Y.YYYY, M.MMM FROM tblYEAR Y, tblMONTH M
>
>This would give you a nice little 'spreadsheet' of every combination of
>years and months.
...
Kinda like having years listed in A2:A101 and months in B1:M1,
selecting B2:M101, typing the formula =$A2&" "&B$1, and pressing
[Ctrl]+[Enter]. Or just using nested For loops. Yes, this is an example
of what database do well (generating FULL cartesians). Generating
partial combinations, like permutations, takes more work (and fuller
understanding).
aaron...@gmail.com
in the world.
with olap i can cartesian as much as you want... billions of physical
records with sub-second response times. without a problem.
Analysis Services 2000 solved every database performance problem the
world has ever known and you guys are still stuck in Excel
AS with SQL 2005 made things about 10 times more powerful; and you guys
aren't on that train.
-Aaron
Harlan Grove
>i can cartesian up to a billion records without a performance problem
>in the world.
Fine. Cartesian up a matrix inverse.
>with olap i can cartesian as much as you want... billions of physical
>records with sub-second response times. without a problem.
Only if OLAP just creates dynamic referencing objects, which it could.
But that wouldn't manipulate any data. My n = 12 case would involve 11
intermediate steps to generate all 12! permutations of 12 items, and
it'd require two orders of magnitude greater number of comparisons. No
way OLAP handles over 37 billion comparison operations with sub-second
response time. The software can't magically eliminate the
CPU-boundedness.
But if joins aren't necessary, I suppose 11 separate queries aren't
necessary. Should be syntactically possible to use
SELECT T1.N AS N1, T2.N AS N2, T3.N AS N3, T4.N AS N4, T5.N AS N5, T6.N
AS N6,
T7.N AS N7, T8.N AS N8, T9.N AS N9, T10.N AS N10, T11.N AS N11, T12.N
AS T12
FROM T T1, T T2, T T3, T T4, T T5, T T6, T T7, T T8, T T9, T T10, T
T11, T T12
WHERE ((N1<>N2) AND (N1<>N3) AND (N1<>N4) AND (N1<>N5) AND (N1<>N6)
AND (N1<>N7) AND (N1<>N8) AND (N1<>N9) AND (N1<>N10) AND (N1<>N11)
AND (N1<>N12) AND (N2<>N3) AND (N2<>N4) AND (N2<>N5) AND (N2<>N6)
AND (N2<>N7) AND (N2<>N8) AND (N2<>N9) AND (N2<>N10) AND (N2<>N11)
AND (N2<>N12) AND (N3<>N4) AND (N3<>N5) AND (N3<>N6) AND (N3<>N7)
AND (N3<>N8) AND (N3<>N9) AND (N3<>N10) AND (N3<>N11) AND (N3<>N12)
AND (N4<>N5) AND (N4<>N6) AND (N4<>N7) AND (N4<>N8) AND (N4<>N9)
AND (N4<>N10) AND (N4<>N11) AND (N4<>N12) AND (N5<>N6) AND (N5<>N7)
AND (N5<>N8) AND (N5<>N9) AND (N5<>N10) AND (N5<>N11) AND (N5<>N12)
AND (N6<>N7) AND (N6<>N8) AND (N6<>N9) AND (N6<>N10) AND (N6<>N11)
AND (N6<>N12) AND (N7<>N8) AND (N7<>N9) AND (N7<>N10) AND (N7<>N11)
AND (N7<>N12) AND (N8<>N9) AND (N8<>N10) AND (N8<>N11) AND (N8<>N12)
AND (N9<>N10) AND (N9<>N11) AND (N9<>N12) AND (N10<>N11) AND (N10<>N12)
AND (N11<>N12))
With T containing a single integer field with 12 records from 1 to 12,
see if this cartesian runs with sub-second response time.
>Analysis Services 2000 solved every database performance problem the
>world has ever known and you guys are still stuck in Excel
Sure it did.
>AS with SQL 2005 made things about 10 times more powerful; and you guys
>aren't on that train.
So it can invert matrices?
Harlan Grove
...
>But if joins aren't necessary, I suppose 11 separate queries aren't
>necessary. Should be syntactically possible to use
>
>SELECT T1.N AS N1, T2.N AS N2, T3.N AS N3, T4.N AS N4, T5.N AS N5, T6.N
>AS N6,
>T7.N AS N7, T8.N AS N8, T9.N AS N9, T10.N AS N10, T11.N AS N11, T12.N
>AS T12
>FROM T T1, T T2, T T3, T T4, T T5, T T6, T T7, T T8, T T9, T T10, T
>T11, T T12
>WHERE ((N1<>N2) AND (N1<>N3) AND (N1<>N4) AND (N1<>N5) AND (N1<>N6)
>AND (N1<>N7) AND (N1<>N8) AND (N1<>N9) AND (N1<>N10) AND (N1<>N11)
Poor syntax in the WHERE clause. Me bad.
I just tried this out in Access. Given T with one field named N
containing long integers from 1 to 12, Access generated the
permutations of 6 items using the query
SELECT T1.N AS N1, T2.N AS N2, T3.N AS N3, T4.N AS N4, T5.N AS N5, T6.N
AS N6
FROM T AS T1, T AS T2, T AS T3, T AS T4, T AS T5, T AS T6
WHERE ((T1.N<>T2.N) AND (T1.N<>T3.N) AND (T1.N<>T4.N) AND (T1.N<>T5.N)
AND (T1.N<>T6.N) AND (T2.N<>T3.N) AND (T2.N<>T4.N) AND (T2.N<>T5.N)
AND (T2.N<>T6.N) AND (T3.N<>T4.N) AND (T3.N<>T5.N) AND (T3.N<>T6.N)
AND (T4.N<>T5.N) AND (T4.N<>T6.N) AND (T5.N<>T6.N))
ORDER BY T1.N, T2.N, T3.N, T4.N, T5.N, T6.N;
*BUT* Access couldn't handle a similar query to generate the
permutations of 8 items using the query
SELECT T1.N AS N1, T2.N AS N2, T3.N AS N3, T4.N AS N4, T5.N AS N5, T6.N
AS N6,
T7.N AS N7, T8.N AS N8
FROM T AS T1, T AS T2, T AS T3, T AS T4, T AS T5, T AS T6, T T7, T T8
WHERE ((T1.N<>T2.N) AND (T1.N<>T3.N) AND (T1.N<>T4.N) AND (T1.N<>T5.N)
AND (T1.N<>T6.N) AND (T1.N<>T7.N) AND (T1.N<>T8.N) AND (T2.N<>T3.N)
AND (T2.N<>T4.N) AND (T2.N<>T5.N) AND (T2.N<>T6.N) AND (T2.N<>T7.N)
AND (T2.N<>T8.N) AND (T3.N<>T4.N) AND (T3.N<>T5.N) AND (T3.N<>T6.N)
AND (T3.N<>T7.N) AND (T3.N<>T8.N) AND (T4.N<>T5.N) AND (T4.N<>T6.N)
AND (T4.N<>T7.N) AND (T4.N<>T8.N) AND (T5.N<>T6.N) AND (T5.N<>T7.N)
AND (T5.N<>T8.N) AND (T6.N<>T7.N) AND (T6.N<>T8.N) AND (T7.N<>T8.N))
ORDER BY T1.N, T2.N, T3.N, T4.N, T5.N, T6.N, T7.N, T8.N;
It aborted with the message 'Not enough space on temporary disk.'
FWIW, Excel wouldn't have an easy time with that either since it'd
require 305 worksheets to hold all 20 million-odd permutations.
dbah...@hotmail.com
>AS N6,
>T7.N AS N7, T8.N AS N8, T9.N AS N9, T10.N AS N10, T11.N AS N11, T12.N
>AS T12
>FROM T T1, T T2, T T3, T T4, T T5, T T6, T T7, T T8, T T9, T T10, T
>T11, T T12
that should be a little bit easier
and re: tempspace.. I dont ever use MDB for anything in the real world;
i use MSDE-- the freeware version of SQL Sever. That way; i dont have
to rewrite shit ever-- i just throw it on a real server when I need to
and I have a single language for DB stuff and a single language for
frontend stuff. MSDE and SQL Server to say the least; these dont have
the same problems as MDB.
and the best part? MS Access has the best sproc design tools in the
world.. i mean-- anywhere; and product.. and db product; and
professional level product.. ADP against MSDE is the most rich querying
environment anywhere. I mean-- it's all drag and drop.
re:
No
way OLAP handles over 37 billion comparison operations with sub-second
response time. The software can't magically eliminate the
CPU-boundedness.
YES OH YES IT DOES KIDS
im sorry your stupid IT people chose cognos or any of those other piece
of shit apps
www.olapreport.com microsoft has by far the largest $$ of any vendor,
including oracle, ibm... MS _RULES_ the olap market. and olap is the
most important market in the world.
that is why i dont give a flying shit about IBM and Oracle they have
already become irrelevent.. I mean.. MS can do the same thing they can;
bigger and better and faster and cheaper
dbah...@hotmail.com
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/wp_msas_9.asp
if olap -- analysis services has 12 dimensions with one level each; and
each level has 100 members-- it doesn't actually store ANYTHING
resembling 20m records.
OLAP is a generation past relational; it is multidimensional and it can
eat your 2-dimensional matrices for lunch
Harlan Grove
>ps - just for the record
>
>http://www.sql-server-performance.com/wp_msas_9.asp
>
>if olap -- analysis services has 12 dimensions with one level each; and
>each level has 100 members-- it doesn't actually store ANYTHING
>resembling 20m records.
?
Difficult to see how the linked article is relevant to the point you're
making.
I'll accept that OLAP relations don't result in storing anything other
than a referencing object that can be used to calculate things similar
to ad hoc indexing.
Now the problem with generating permutations is that the goal *is*
generating the permutations, which means producing records *or*
performing calculations based on what the permutations migh be. So
you'd either need to produce a file containing all 12! (480 million)
permutations (each a 12 field record) or generate them on the fly each
time you need to perform calculations based on them. Counting the
number of permutations in which at least 6 adjacent fields are in
serial ascending order (e.g., 12 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 2 9 11) would take
much longer than a fraction of a second unless all calculations such as
these were precalculated and cached, which would eat terabytes of
storage.
>OLAP is a generation past relational; it is multidimensional and it can
>eat your 2-dimensional matrices for lunch
It just can't invert them?
It's a referencing scheme. It may be an outstanding referencing scheme.
It may even include some useful functions in MDX. But it's not a
replacement for all other extant calculation software.
Harlan Grove
>>SELECT T1.N AS N1, T2.N AS N2, T3.N AS N3, T4.N AS N4, T5.N AS N5, T6.N
>>AS N6,
>>T7.N AS N7, T8.N AS N8, T9.N AS N9, T10.N AS N10, T11.N AS N11, T12.N
>>AS T12
>>FROM T T1, T T2, T T3, T T4, T T5, T T6, T T7, T T8, T T9, T T10, T
>>T11, T T12
>>WHERE N1 NOT IN (T2.N, T3.N, T4.N, T5.N, T6.N); etc
>
>that should be a little bit easier
OK, but Access 2002 doesn't like N1 in the WHERE clause. It pops up a
dialog asking for the value of the N1 parameter.
>and re: tempspace.. I dont ever use MDB for anything in the real world;
>i use MSDE-- the freeware version of SQL Sever. That way; i dont have
>to rewrite shit ever-- i just throw it on a real server when I need to
>and I have a single language for DB stuff and a single language for
>frontend stuff. MSDE and SQL Server to say the least; these dont have
>the same problems as MDB.
...
Yes, but as I've repeatedly told you, most business users (including
me) don't have MSDE installed on their PCs, and we're unlikely to get
our IT departments to install it unless our primary job function is
database developer. MSDE may even be a free download, but my company's
IT policy makes installing nonstandard software a no-no. So I have only
Access to use, and only with MDB.
This is the point in our back and forth where it degenerates into
something like me asking 'how can I translate this Syriac text into
English?' and you responding 'learn Phonecian because the best
Phonecian to Syriac dictionary is free!'
>re:
>No
>way OLAP handles over 37 billion comparison operations with sub-second
>response time. The software can't magically eliminate the
>CPU-boundedness.
>
>YES OH YES IT DOES KIDS
>im sorry your stupid IT people chose cognos or any of those other piece
>of shit apps
...
Oh not it doesn't. It may create a referencing object sub-second, but
it can't perform 37 billion floating point operations sub-second if the
CPU's FPU can only crank out 1 billion FLOPS under ideal circumstances.
The software can't make hardware perform faster than it's physical
upper limit. Now it could cache calculations, but that means they'd
need to be performed when the OLAP cube is created or during
maintenance, but somewhere along the way the hardware speed must be
reconned with.
aaron...@gmail.com
generate them on the fly.
kinda does both. and it's lighting fast.. i mean.. WOW
well technically; you can specify which percentage of aggregates to
store; and then you can store them in multiple formats; relationally or
in memory..
it's kinda crazy to think about relational -> olap -> relational
but it really really is a beautiful solution for some things. i mean..
the bottom line is that it's about 10 times more powerful than your
traditional, girly-man pivotTables.
it's kinda like what you do with offline cubes-- from excel generate
some client side cubes-- but it's a lot more hierarchial than that.. i
mean. .it gives Excel REAL drilldown.
i just think that it's insanity to claim that Excel is more powerful
than SQL. I mean-- TSQL is just plain faster and more powerful than
VBA. Any way you look at it.
Harlan Grove
...
>i just think that it's insanity to claim that Excel is more powerful
>than SQL. I mean-- TSQL is just plain faster and more powerful than
>VBA. Any way you look at it.
But it's all referencing. It's not calculations unless they're cached,
in which case they took a lot of time to generate when the cube was
created, and it'd take a significant amount of time to regenerate if a
substantial portion of the cube changed.
Spreadsheets have a poor referencing scheme, but they handle the
calculations better aside from the standard aggregates cached in OLAP
cubes: COUNT, SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, etc. Nontrivial matrix
calculations, such as inverses and determinants (or
eigenvectors/eigenvalues) are ill suited to relational or
multidimensional referencing. There really are some operations in which
all you need for referencing is simple array indexing, and all the real
work is done in the calculations.
That's one key difference between OLAP and spreadsheets. OLAP is geared
towards data sets that retain most of their data but add to it over
time. Spreadsheets are geared towards using completely different data
sets (entries) from one calculation cycle to the next. Of course OLAP
would be quicker with old data, but generating a spreadsheet would
likely be a lot quicker than generating a new cube. They deal with very
different data domains, so it shouldn't be surprising that they differ
in form. You deal with predominantly static data. I don't. We deal with
different data, so we prefer different tools.
Jay Petrulis
i mean...WOW
it's kinda like when someone asks you to do something and you don't
have a clue how to do it and you evade the question in the
non-responses.
i think its just insanity that people use Excel for tasks that it is
already designed to do. i mean ... seriously if you were going to type
a letter you would use Access. No girly man Word. Eck, gag me with a
spoon. You write the same letter every week. A database can do it a
lot faster. I can spam a million letters a day. Use a database kid.
>>> Uh, I only have to write one letter.
go play in the sandbox. get real grow up and get away from that pen
and paper crap.
Aaron, any way you try to spin it, you are a clown. Stop going off on
tangents. Harlan's responses provide details and specifics in YOUR
CLAIMED AREA OF EXPERTISE while yours are just badly written idiotic
rants. You cannot respond intelligently at all.
dbah...@hotmail.com
yeah; i didn't have time to look into it; but im not scared of your
'super-duper complex matrices'
i mean.. seriously here
spreadsheets are for babies