Where are the components?

[PhilipLeitch]

After being shown through this Colab the "Excel Component" in MCad 13/14, it is now one of my most used features. It facilitates simply data entry and formating (into the Excel component) while also simplifying the integration into Mathcad.

Do I seriously need to revert back to load save function calls? That's going back to early 1990's unintegrated processes. Or alternatively copy and pasting between applications (going back to the mid 1990's - heck even that could be automated). This approach has been outdated since COM/Corba came into being. What's more, since the early 2000's it is simpler than ever to integrate between all applications Soap (and its extensions such as web services).

Integration between applications is becoming seamless - not clunkier.

The Excel component should at least be replicated in Prime


Philip
___________________
Nobody can hear you scream in Euclidean space.

[SteveKeen]

Agreed!

I use Mathcad 14 to integrate over 1,000 separate Excel files (and PRN files, TXT file etc.) for empirical analysis. These all come from third parties--the US Federal Reserve, the BLS, etc.

All these data originators still use Excel 2003 or earlier formats to make their data publicly available--none of them are in XLSW or XLSM as Prime expects them to be.

Implement support for loading old Excel formats into Prime please--otherwise anyone like me who has to rely on third party sourced data won't be able to use it without "stepping back in time" to READFILE etc.

[SteveKeen]

The READEXCEL component forces you to specify a data range, unlike the Mathcad 14 function that simply imported the entire Excel component.

This is useless for the work I do, which relies on external data providers updating data on a regular basis. The source data file therefore grows by a row every time data is added--which can be daily for a stock market data feed, monthly for CPI figures from the BLS, etc.

To use Prime where I currently use Mathcad 14, I would have to manually edit every READEXCEL statement every time I wanted new data--not fun when there are about 1,000 data sources that I use every month.

Please generalise the READEXCEL component to make specifying the Sheet, Column and Row components optional rather than compulsory.

[mzeftel]

We will be looking at all of this in Prime 2. You can also update your Excel 2003 files to be read as Excel 2007.

Mona

[SteveKeen]

Yes I can Mona,

But the 50 or so providers from whom my data is sourced around the world--the OECD, the IMF, the Federal Reserve, the Case-Shiller Index etc.--won't do that for me.

Instead I will have to load every one of about 1,000 Excel files myself and save them as 2007 format before I can load them into Prime--or I can just keep working with Mathcad 14 which will load them no problem.

I can appreciate that providing backward compatibility between 2007 and 2003 Excel formats would be a very big job. But until Prime can support (still very active) legacy 3rd party data formats as Mathcad 14 does via its components, its appeal to established Mathcad users and potentially new users) will be limited.

Though it might delay the release even further, I would regard implementing the equivalent of Components (or the Data Import Wizard) as necessary for Prime 1.0 to be commercially successful.

[PhilipLeitch]

On 5/3/2010 6:55:48 PM, SteveKeen wrote:
>Though it might delay the
>release even further, I would
>regard implementing the
>equivalent of Components (or
>the Data Import Wizard) as
>necessary for Prime 1.0 to be
>commercially successful.

Ditto

The time delay I'm having just working with small data sets is a strain. I get new data each day. I have to update my Excel 2003 file, save it as 2007 (which takes a while to convert), close it, go into Matchad, and then adjust the parameters to the read function(s).

If I make a mistake I have to go through the whole process again (needing to close the document each time for Mathcad to be able to load it).

In MCad 14 I open the document, paste/enter in the new values and then click out of the component then adjust the properties of the component to take in the new range.

If I make a mistake I just click into the component, fix it and click out.

Philip
___________________
Nobody can hear you scream in Euclidean space.

[SteveKeen]

It's obvious that testers are putting far less time and energy into this Alpha program than the previous "Beta"--even though this is a much improved program.

My guess as to why is that it's not possible to use Prime as a complete replacement for Mathcad while testing it out. That has never been the case prior to Prime (B or A): when a new version came out, I happily took the risk of crashing the system to try out the new functionality in version X+1 over version X.

As a result, testers play with Prime when they have a bit of spare time (and for most of us that's not often), so you're getting very little feedback from us.

For my part, I would be able to at least spend say 25% of my Mathcad working time on Prime if you added the capability to import Excel 2003 files AND text/CSV files with something approaching the flexibility of the M14 components or Data Import Wizard.

I can appreciate that this might delay the release of Prime even more. But if this doesn't happen, coincidentally Prime will get a lot less user testing than any previous version of Mathcad prior to its release. I've seen very good software die in the past for that reason, since it's far more likely that a deadly bug will get into the release version (this almost killed the superb DOS database Advanced Revelation when it moved over to Windoze, for example).

[RichardJ]

On 5/12/2010 5:54:26 AM, SteveKeen wrote:

>My guess as to why is that
>it's not possible to use Prime
>as a complete replacement for
>Mathcad while testing it out.

In my case that is certainly true. I have been very busy recently, but I have spent a fair amount of that time in Mathcad. I can't switch to Prime for any real work though because

a) It can't read my existing worksheets
b) It lacks capabilities I need to do my work
c) Even if I did create a worksheet to do what I need, I can't save it with any guarantee it will be usable in the future.

So, as you say, it's spare time only and right now my paying clients are not leaving me with much of that.

Richard

[IRstuff]

Part of the issue is that we know that MP is not the product path that we're on, so there's much less vested interest. I'm pretty sure that if M15 had a beta, there would have been much more interest.


TTFN,
Eden

[mzeftel]

For importing csv files did you try READCSV?
We plan to add more Excel and Data import/export and component like features in Mathcad Prime 2.0.

If you have limited time, I'd like to get your feedback on the programming operators.

Thanks,

Mona

[mzeftel]

We plan to address these issues in Prime 2.0.

Mona