My thought experiment is to jump into a helicopter and have a look at what people and organisations are trying to achieve.
The data in a spreadsheet is not isolated. It comes from somewhere and is usually going somewhere when the work is done (as more data or a decision). Is may even be a real-time flow of data.
If we had a system where data was coming from one or more sources (big data), and then in a process, filtered, combined, cleaned, analysed, reviewed, graphed) then I can imaging a series of tools with a spreadsheet like UI and data flowing between them in an orchestrated way.
Although each tool has a familiar spreadsheet UI, some might, for example, allow data to be filtered but not modified.
A group of people could use this system to achieve some business goal.
After an organisation's data sources are hooked up, then any power users could create flowchart like processes and select which tool to use in each step and then invite others to participate.
In a real system you would expect a real-time flow of data with each intermediate tool automatically updated as new data arrives and then flow onward after a human intervention was made or perhaps just an automated step.
Anyone with access could jump in and get a feed from any point in the system and do their own work with the data.
There might also be some scripts in your favourite language to do additional processing along the way.
What do we leave out:
- error prone copy/paste
- the ability to clobber data or formula's in unexpected places.
The data in a spreadsheet is not isolated. It comes from somewhere and is usually going somewhere when the work is done (as more data or a decision). Is may even be a real-time flow of data.
If we had a system where data was coming from one or more sources (big data), and then in a process, filtered, combined, cleaned, analysed, reviewed, graphed) then I can imaging a series of tools with a spreadsheet like UI and data flowing between them in an orchestrated way.
Although each tool has a familiar spreadsheet UI, some might, for example, allow data to be filtered but not modified.
A group of people could use this system to achieve some business goal.
After an organisation's data sources are hooked up, then any power users could create flowchart like processes and select which tool to use in each step and then invite others to participate.
In a real system you would expect a real-time flow of data with each intermediate tool automatically updated as new data arrives and then flow onward after a human intervention was made or perhaps just an automated step.
Anyone with access could jump in and get a feed from any point in the system and do their own work with the data.
There might also be some scripts in your favourite language to do additional processing along the way.
What do we leave out: