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As a heavy user of DataNitro in the finance world, I can attest to how much it has improved my life. It allows me to interact with my data providers' excel plugins in a much more expedient manner. I could use their direct data feeds, but testing things on those is a PITA.

Largely, though, I agree that DN isn't really necessary/useful but for a small niche... but when you need it, it's EXTREMELY necessary.

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In a prior life I used a lot of VBA to process some scenario modeling Excel spreadsheets. Python would have been much better. Python is also becoming more and more common in Financial Services.

I haven't used DataNitro, but it would have helped me in the past, and it fills a very real need. I think the niche may be bigger than you give it credit for.

I think it's comparable to XMLSpy, in how powerful it is, how niche it is, how incredibly useful it is to some people, and how expensive it is. https://datanitro.com/pricing.html

The pricing actually isn't that high if the target is Finance. If anything it may be too low. These are folks who pay ~$20K per user per year for Bloomberg.

I meant in absolute terms. There are people who are happy to pay for XMLSpy, too. Ditto for AutoCAD.

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