Re: Financial models using Ruby
Hey thanks a lot Ralf - tons of strong points there. I'll definitely be going for Ruby now. The drawbacks: 1) people could not longer use Excel 2) no gui I'm sure I can make up for this by turning it into a smooth Rails webapp (that imitates cells), maybe coupled with a decent charting library. If anybody has any suggestions, do feel free to let me know and in turn I'll keep them posted as well. Most important might be Unit-testing (I'm sure there are thousands of buggy excel lists in the banks out there - hey might be the REAL reason for the crisis ;-). Hahaha :) Thanks again man! On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Ralf Mueller ralf.muel...@zmaw.de wrote: On 02/05/2013 08:41 AM, Dwayne Henderson wrote: I'm working on this financial modelhttp://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/moyes/html/documents/FinancialProjectionsModelv6.8.9.xlsfor my upcoming ecommerce business using OpenOffice.org Calc (and the BASIC programming language). But as the need for more advanced programming arises (making the various spreadsheets more dynamic and interconnected, applying algorithms for analyzing data and forecasts etc.) I can't help but think that maybe this would all be a lot easier if it was Ruby. Is anyone aware of similar financial models made using Ruby, and if so how are they implemented? Are they simply Ruby wrappers for Calc or Excel, or maybe Xero, or a dedicated Rails app? --Dwayne Hi Dwayne! I'm not familiar with any financial models, but I've seen a lot excel stuff for analyzing data. so here are my 2cts: When I worked for a x-Ray tube company, they used excel to prepare data for the tube controller. I took 1-2 hours for every tube and only 2 people were able to do this. My first task was to improve this situation. I used ruby for this, although they wanted me to do this in VBA ;-) With my final version it was possible to create the data 1) within 5 min per tube 2) automatically from the command line 3) independent of the number of data sets (excel strongly depends on the number of rows or columns of input data). The drawbacks: 1) people could not longer use Excel - I'm not kidding, this IS a real disadvantage, because (esp.) non-programmers tend to use excel for everything. That's why it's a lot easier to give your software away, when you've written it in Excel (or calc). People are simply familiar with it. 2) no gui - my gui was an editor with the config file opened. Anything else (like a cool gui) will keep you from the problem (or I am just not familiar with writing guis). I think ruby is a really good choice for doing these things - implementation could take a while, but you'll get a lot back: Most important might be Unit-testing (I'm sure there are thousands of buggy excel lists in the banks out there - hey might be the REAL reason for the crisis ;-). As long as you do not want to change anything excel is ok, because it simply runs. Keep in mind, who should use your software - programs are most useful when used properly. regards ralf
Re: Financial models using Ruby
Why not use Python, python has more mathematical modules like numpy as well as better compatibility with the UNO bridge. Also you can generate Python extensions, so the code could be monetized. Also Python is much better supported and you can find tons of examples to do a lot in OpenOffice and Python (http://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewforum.php?f=45), things like object analysis through MRI (http://extensions.openoffice.org/en/search/node/MRI). Also you have a third choice which is Java and also includes a very powerful support for creating components, and Calc Add-Ins which you can see some tutorials that work with NetBeans (http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/OpenOffice_Calc_Add-In_Project_Type). On 2/5/13, Dwayne Henderson its.code.in.h...@gmail.com wrote: Hey thanks a lot Ralf - tons of strong points there. I'll definitely be going for Ruby now. The drawbacks: 1) people could not longer use Excel 2) no gui I'm sure I can make up for this by turning it into a smooth Rails webapp (that imitates cells), maybe coupled with a decent charting library. If anybody has any suggestions, do feel free to let me know and in turn I'll keep them posted as well. Most important might be Unit-testing (I'm sure there are thousands of buggy excel lists in the banks out there - hey might be the REAL reason for the crisis ;-). Hahaha :) Thanks again man! On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Ralf Mueller ralf.muel...@zmaw.de wrote: On 02/05/2013 08:41 AM, Dwayne Henderson wrote: I'm working on this financial modelhttp://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/moyes/html/documents/FinancialProjectionsModelv6.8.9.xlsfor my upcoming ecommerce business using OpenOffice.org Calc (and the BASIC programming language). But as the need for more advanced programming arises (making the various spreadsheets more dynamic and interconnected, applying algorithms for analyzing data and forecasts etc.) I can't help but think that maybe this would all be a lot easier if it was Ruby. Is anyone aware of similar financial models made using Ruby, and if so how are they implemented? Are they simply Ruby wrappers for Calc or Excel, or maybe Xero, or a dedicated Rails app? --Dwayne Hi Dwayne! I'm not familiar with any financial models, but I've seen a lot excel stuff for analyzing data. so here are my 2cts: When I worked for a x-Ray tube company, they used excel to prepare data for the tube controller. I took 1-2 hours for every tube and only 2 people were able to do this. My first task was to improve this situation. I used ruby for this, although they wanted me to do this in VBA ;-) With my final version it was possible to create the data 1) within 5 min per tube 2) automatically from the command line 3) independent of the number of data sets (excel strongly depends on the number of rows or columns of input data). The drawbacks: 1) people could not longer use Excel - I'm not kidding, this IS a real disadvantage, because (esp.) non-programmers tend to use excel for everything. That's why it's a lot easier to give your software away, when you've written it in Excel (or calc). People are simply familiar with it. 2) no gui - my gui was an editor with the config file opened. Anything else (like a cool gui) will keep you from the problem (or I am just not familiar with writing guis). I think ruby is a really good choice for doing these things - implementation could take a while, but you'll get a lot back: Most important might be Unit-testing (I'm sure there are thousands of buggy excel lists in the banks out there - hey might be the REAL reason for the crisis ;-). As long as you do not want to change anything excel is ok, because it simply runs. Keep in mind, who should use your software - programs are most useful when used properly. regards ralf -- Alexandro Colorado Apache OpenOffice Contributor http://es.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
Re: Financial models using Ruby
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 4:30 AM, Dwayne Henderson its.code.in.h...@gmail.com wrote: I'm working on this financial modelhttp://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/moyes/html/documents/FinancialProjectionsModelv6.8.9.xlsfor my upcoming ecommerce business using OpenOffice.org Calc (and the BASIC programming language). But as the need for more advanced programming arises (making the various spreadsheets more dynamic and interconnected, applying algorithms for analyzing data and forecasts etc.) I can't help but think that maybe this would all be a lot easier if it was Ruby. Is anyone aware of similar financial models made using Ruby, and if so how are they implemented? Are they simply Ruby wrappers for Calc or Excel, or maybe Xero, or a dedicated Rails app? One approach might be to do the complicated modeling in Ruby and then generate an ODF spreadsheet from it. That then allows the user to view the results in a familiar UI. A quick search shows at least one gem: http://rubygems.org/gems/odf-spreadsheet Regards, -Rob --Dwayne - To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
