Excel Web Services: What is it?

In the previous post, I wrote that Excel can be a powerful tool for collaboration between business users and programmers who are designing and developing applications. In order to explain this in greater detail, we have to cover a few topics, the first being Excel Web Services.

Excel Web Services allows programmers to use a spreadsheet or template for programming purposes. This is done by filling the sheet with data, running its formulas and using the resulting information.

To better understand why Excel Web Services can be so helpful to programmers, let’s listen to two conversations between imaginary corporate employees. Meet Mark Money, ACME’s CFO, and Java Jake, a programmer. Unfortunately, ACME has not yet adopted Excel Services.

MM: Jake, good work on the project financials screen. I need you to add a field that shows the NPV for each project.

JJ: Thanks. What’s an NPV?

MM: NPV stands for “net present value.” It’s a way to check whether investing in a specific project will bring in more profit than depositing the same amount in the bank and collecting interest.

JJ: That sounds really complicated. How do you calculate NPV?

MM: I’ve got an excellent book about this (drops a 300-page finance book on the table).

JJ: Well (weighing the book) . . . OK. This is going to take me two weeks minimum to figure out. Plus, since I’m not sure I’ll get it right, I’ll need you to prepare some test data so you can check my algorithm.

MM: Two weeks! Test data! Forget that; I’ll just use my Excel template.

Let’s also eavesdrop on a conversation between Phil Funding and Esther Excel, employees at Early Adopters Corp., the first company to try out Excel Services.

PF: Esther, good work on the project financials screen. I need you to add a field that shows the NPV for each project.

EE: Can we calculate that using the data we already have in the system? Can you prepare an Excel spreadsheet that shows how to calculate it?

PF: Yes to both of your questions.

EE: Great, just send me the spreadsheet and I’ll have it done. It shouldn’t take more than a day.

PF: Wow, that’s wonderful. How can you do this?

EE: I’ll use your spreadsheet as a Web service. For every project you view in the project financials screen, I will fill the spreadsheet with the project’s data, get the result and place it in the NPV field. Also, if you need to change the way this NPV thing is calculated, you can just change the template, and I’ll update the Web service in about five minutes.

PF: Sweet!

For the programmers among you, David Gainer of Microsoft gives a more technical introduction to Excel Web Services here and here.

No fictional characters or companies were damaged during the production of this post.

Posted on August 25, 2006 by Yoav Ezer 
Filed Under Methodology

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