R
R Russell
I've designed a beta interactive WEB site to model employment
forecasts. The site requests an employee ID, looks up their
employment info in a database ( ie hire date, salary history, etc.)
and projects future employment models. For the projections, I'm
using Excel as a back ground number cruncher. I'm launching Excel via
VBScipt, loading a prewritten Excel file, populating cells in the
speadsheet via VBScipt, and calcing the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet
then forecast the various models, results are extracted from the
spreadsheet and it also creates two graphes/charts as gif files. Excel
then unloads. Excel is NOT presented to the WEB user. The results and
graphes/charts are then presented on the Web site. The site is
working perfectly. The response time is approx 3-4 seconds using my
laptop (pentium IV with 256 ram) and IIS.
Being new at this web design, I've received some criticism for using
Excel as a number cruncher and graph/chart creater - it'll be to slow
when the sight goes live. Using Excel, to me anyway, was a
no-brainer, its much simpler to code in Excel and the graphing
capabilities are superb. I've also got numerous spreadsheets as well
as VB functions written for Excel (why re-invent the wheel).
Can anyone honestly comment on the use of Excel as a background number
cruncher on the WEB. What type of performance one can expect? Is
Excel a viable option for WEB site use? We don't expect heavy traffic
on the site, most likely normal traffic will be 2-3 simultaneous users
and at most 10-15 simultaneous users during an occasional peak period.
Thaks for your comments
Rich
forecasts. The site requests an employee ID, looks up their
employment info in a database ( ie hire date, salary history, etc.)
and projects future employment models. For the projections, I'm
using Excel as a back ground number cruncher. I'm launching Excel via
VBScipt, loading a prewritten Excel file, populating cells in the
speadsheet via VBScipt, and calcing the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet
then forecast the various models, results are extracted from the
spreadsheet and it also creates two graphes/charts as gif files. Excel
then unloads. Excel is NOT presented to the WEB user. The results and
graphes/charts are then presented on the Web site. The site is
working perfectly. The response time is approx 3-4 seconds using my
laptop (pentium IV with 256 ram) and IIS.
Being new at this web design, I've received some criticism for using
Excel as a number cruncher and graph/chart creater - it'll be to slow
when the sight goes live. Using Excel, to me anyway, was a
no-brainer, its much simpler to code in Excel and the graphing
capabilities are superb. I've also got numerous spreadsheets as well
as VB functions written for Excel (why re-invent the wheel).
Can anyone honestly comment on the use of Excel as a background number
cruncher on the WEB. What type of performance one can expect? Is
Excel a viable option for WEB site use? We don't expect heavy traffic
on the site, most likely normal traffic will be 2-3 simultaneous users
and at most 10-15 simultaneous users during an occasional peak period.
Thaks for your comments
Rich