Alternatives to Excel for tabular data? Minitab? Tableau?

Howard · May 30, 2018

Thanks a lot, @userque. You're being very helpful.

userque · May 30, 2018

Howard said:
Thanks a lot, @userque. You're being very helpful.

You asked nicely.

tommcginnis · May 30, 2018

Howard said:
Yes, I understand that., It's difficult to get accurate advice when one can't provide accurate information about specifics (which I simply can't...).

I have a Dell 7000 laptop with 16 GB DDR memory and 128 GB SSD hard-drive I bought just months ago. It could very well be that I have considerable potential for improvement here, but I think it's mostly the framework provided to me that's too slow.

Yowser. That is *plenty* of horsepower for a good coupla' years. (Unless you live-stream anything -- then just put your dual-core i5 into your trading slot, and put the thoroughbred into the "Media & Other Sludge" spot.

)

tommcginnis · May 30, 2018

R1234 said:
Major limitation of LibreOffice is they limit you to 1000 columns. And Libre uses that awful macro language that is similar to the one in OpenOffice.

Sheeesh, man!
My brain can't keep my A→Z, AA→AZ, BA→BZ in my poor head now! That'd be 26*3 = 78 columns. It's good to know (I guess) that I have 922 columns to spare.
"Sweet!"

dennisa · May 30, 2018

Howard said:
Actually, my data IS stored in SQL and I utilize an SQL database already. But I don't really have a clue as to exactly how it works. But basically, my calculations are done in C# and stored in a DB.

Excel is basically just used as a front-end to display the data and filter/sort it.

The calculations outside Excel are fairly fast. It's loading, refreshing and navigating in Excel which is slow. I have a hunch that it could have been set up better by those who programmed it.

Regardless, I still have the same predicament which is that I'm basically dependent on outside help whenever I get a new idea that I want implemented within this framework. I would love to be completely independent.

I'm an engineer by trade and no fool, so I can look at code and have a basic understanding of some of it, but I currently feel it's a long stretch from there and to proficiently work in code myself.

I would recommend downloading a trial version of Tableau. It will read directly from the SQL table and you can do your manipulations.

Howard · May 30, 2018

userque said:
You asked nicely.

I always appreciate when people take the time to help me out.

As for how to proceed from here, I'm a little on the fence...

What I currently have in Excel does work. I'm just not completely satisfied. Particularly with the speed aspect at the moment. So, it won't be a final solution for me long term.

But, changing a system does take some time and I'm already day trading in addition to a full-time job (which hopefully I quit by 2018), so it might be that I will wait until I have more time available.

That said, I'll probably trial RapidMiner over this weekend.

Howard · May 30, 2018

tommcginnis said:
Yowser. That is *plenty* of horsepower for a good coupla' years. (Unless you live-stream anything -- then just put your dual-core i5 into your trading slot, and put the thoroughbred into the "Media & Other Sludge" spot. )

Yes, I figured so. Although I did make some compromises due to budget, I figured it should be sufficient for a trading computer. I have i7 quad cores though.

dennisa said:
I would recommend downloading a trial version of Tableau. It will read directly from the SQL table and you can do your manipulations.

That's a good suggestion. Do you happen to know if connecting it to SQL is an easy feat for a non-programmer such as myself?

truetype · May 30, 2018

Howard said:
Those dense 100 pages look a bit more extensive than 2 hours and a day of work though.

You can skim the statistical functions and the plotting. The core functionality you can learn in two hours.

userque · May 30, 2018

Howard said:
I always appreciate when people take the time to help me out.

As for how to proceed from here, I'm a little on the fence...

Yeah...not fun...I think we've all been there. It's a trial and error thing with a lot of research involved.

Start with your most important factor: speed, or no-programming. For me, it's speed; for you, it's seems to be no programming. (For now, at least. One day, you may realize...I should have went with speed.)

If speed were your main concern, I'd recommend Golang...a recent language created by Google. It's a compiled, new, general purpose language and can handle everything except missile defense control systems

Since no-programming seems to be your main concern, you're left with applications that replace programming with visual building blocks. There are more, but I think Rapidminer and Knime are the most popular/affordable, my guess only.

Btw, you can incorporate 'coding' into them if you later decide to learn programming.

I would bet that there are some (costly?) trading platforms that are based on visual modules ... but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Howard said:
What I currently have in Excel does work. I'm just not completely satisfied. Particularly with the speed aspect at the moment. So, it won't be a final solution for me long term.

But, changing a system does take some time and I'm already day trading in addition to a full-time job (which hopefully I quit by 2018), so it might be that I will wait until I have more time available.

That said, I'll probably trial RapidMiner over this weekend.

Just to be thorough, there are some techniques to speed up Excel macros. Less frequent display updates...or none at all (by using the status display instead); targeted recalculations; converting formula cells to values during runtime when the formula will be static...and then doing the reverse just before a recalculation--all via the VBA code, etc.

Good luck and keep us posted!

DaveV · May 30, 2018

Howard said:
Actually, my data IS stored in SQL and I utilize an SQL database already. But I don't really have a clue as to exactly how it works. But basically, my calculations are done in C# and stored in a DB.

Excel is basically just used as a front-end to display the data and filter/sort it.

You may already have most of the software what you need already installed on your PC. Depending on what you want to accomplish, my guess is that is would be easiest for you to learn to do SQL queries.

First step is determine what flavor of SQL you are using. Edit the C# code, with Notepad, and seach for "Connect". Most likely you will see a line like "SqlConnect( ..." in which case you are using Microsoft SQL Server; or "MySqlConnection" in which case you are using MySql.

Or, you can see how Excel connects to the database. See https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...er-query-22c39d8d-5b60-4d7e-9d4b-ce6680d43bad
The Excel connection string may indicate what type of SQL server is being used.

Once you figure out what SQL database you are using, you may be able to get more help here.