anakic

Yeah, the .NET one - VSTO, visual studio tools for office. Haven't played around much with the web one. Most things QueryStorm does wouldn't be possible in the office apps model, e.g. hosting SQLite. It's too bad because it limits QueryStorm to PC desktop only.

Glad you like it!:) It's a per-user installer, so only you would see it. It shouldn't require admin privileges unless a prerequisite is missing.

It requires .NET 4.5 and vstor (visual studio tools for office runtime).

- .NET 4.5 comes out of the box with Win8 or higher.

- vstor comes out of the box with Office2013 or higher.

QueryStorm's installer checks if the two prerequisites are present, and if not, downloads them from Microsoft and installs them automatically. It will prompt for admin rights only if one of them is not present and needs to be installed.

Is it popping an admin prompt for you?

About source control in Excel, there's a London based company offering a product along those lines called Pathio (https://www.pathio.com/). I know it's not open source, but I'm mentioning it just in case you find it interesting. I actually had a pleasant chat with the founder of Pathio a few months ago, so figured I'd plug the product:)

Yeah, something like that might be the way to do it. Cut off old licenses from new versions but leave it functioning indefinitely with old versions. Offer a paid upgrade option. I think I like that option.

Seems to work fine for me. Hopefully it was just a glitch.

Exactly, you can really go to town on your data, get nasty with it:)

I love regex myself, I feel like a ninja using them:) The replacex function was one of the first ones I implemented. Regex_split is the latest one and I love it (the single post on the QueryStorm blog is about that one).

If you're .NET-savvy, check out the "eval" function, you can implement a function as a C#-like lambda expression.

I did a poor job explaining what the plugin can do, QuickQueries is a step in that direction, but I only prepared a few. Plus they need short videos or at least blog posts to go along with them.

Thanks, your comment made me smile:)

Thanks for your purchase!:) I'm really glad you like it.

One thing to note - since the db engine is running in the same process as Excel it can interact with it. There are some nice things it can do because of this, for instance, SQL-based conditional formatting (e.g. there's a SetFontColor function), calling VBA functions from SQL and a bunch more.

There are also some other quite cool functions, e.g. replacex and regex_split, levdist, eval and others. The QuickQueries dialog has some built-in queries to check out if you're interested in what these can do.

As for permanent licenses, I understand the concern. If I do end up going offering permanent licenses for professional licenses, I'll either upgrade the existing licenses or offer a paid upgrade to the permanent license to cover any price difference.

Absolutely. I actually built a reusable infrastructure of my own. It was technically very cool to work on, and at the time I still hadn't yet made the mental shift of buying services that weren't my core domain. The infrastructure revolves around keys and licenses. A license allows one user (or machine) to use the product. It's a digitally signed file that gets downloaded to the client PC and specifies the product, max version, issue/expiry date etc... A license is created by my server when a valid key is entered into the licensing dialog. The key knows what product is for and what kind of licenses to create. I named the service "Keystodian", the website is up but isn't pretty. The infrastructure underneath works nicely, though. I plan to offer it as a SaaS product at some point, though there is a bit of competition there.

Hi patates. I get your point. As a user, I'd want that too. I had previously priced the professional license at $149 as a one-off price, but then noticed companies were buying those instead of the enterprise ones, and getting unlimited licenses. I'd definitely like to keep the subscription model for enterprise licenses, but would not mind having the private ones be a one-off price. I'll have to think about that. If I do that at some point, I'll change the existing licenses to permanent, to not be a jerk to existing customers:)

Is anyone having installation issues? I'm showing strange things in logs. I can see downloads, but my licensing service does not seem to be issuing the free licenses.

Thanks for the heads up (fixed it) and the kind words!

I've posted about this about six months ago, the original post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583488) was fairly well received, and I thought I'd follow up.

Back then the plugin was called ThingieQuery, which turns out not to be a great name for a product aimed at enterprise customers. Since then, I've been quite busy, I've incorporated, rebranded, sold (licenses), polished, and other verbs as well. I've also adjusted the pricing and switched to a freemium model.

Here's the free vs. paid breakdown:

- Free stuff: basic IDE functionality, full SQL support for tables in Excel, query automation, non-commercial use

- Paid stuff: (in addition to all the free stuff) connectivity to external databases, advanced IDE functionality (autocomplete, error squigglies, etc.), commercial use

The free feature set is pretty useful on its own. Offering it makes sense from a business perspective - to drive adoption, but also from a personal standpoint, since it's a product I'm proud of and would like as many people to make use of it as possible.

The paid licenses come in two flavors:

1. Professional

- for people paying out of pocket

- can activate 2 machines at the same time (e.g. work/home)

- licenses can be transferred ad-hoc to other machines with a 1-min procedure (e.g. when working on a client's computer)

2. Enterprise

- a per-seat license for purchase by companies

- includes support

- can also be transferred from machine to machine

The license types were in large part influenced by the feedback I got in the original post.

I should note that I'm running a December discount promotion; you can use the following key to get a cool 40% discount on a Professional license: RZHDNDT4

In any case, please do take a look and give it a try. The trial licenses (for the premium features) have been reset since last post, so you can use a new one even if you've used a trial before.

Feedback, customers, and free users are most welcome and appreciated:)

Thank you, all very good points.

Any chance you could send me your contact info?

That sounds awesome! Send me some contact info and I'll get in touch!

And you made my day:)

Well it was fun, I felt it was the type of tool I would want for my self in Excel. Also, not liking ones regular job goes a long way to fuel enthusiasm for hobby projects:) And it did hit the front page when /u/petepete crossposted it from reddit last year, which was a big moral boost.

Thanks!

1 - much debate about this, it's certainly safer to do so

2 - if you take a look at the license again you'll notice the digital signature field, to make a generator you would need my private key:P

Boat is good, I like boat. :)

They're good for aggregating data, but they're not designed for precise querying, manipulating and cleaning data. If they were, we'd likely see powerpivot replacing sql server management studio:)

If you connect using a SQL Server instance yes, with the built in database - no, SQLite doesn't have them yet.

I've added some of my own functions to the SQLite engine though, e.g. ElementAt(pos, elements, orderElements) will return the element at position pos in a group, ordered by orderElements. Not exactly window functions, but close.

Would have to think about it, I think I'd say yes to re-selling, not sure about white labeling though, to be successful with it I need to build the brand. Too late here to say anything more, barely awake at the moment:)

Doesn't support it yet, did not think to use it for directory services, that's an excellent idea! PowerQuery can query ad already though but still, it's worth investigating. Thanks for the tip.

Thank you, that's the plan! And hopefully to earn a decent living while I'm at it:)

Any idea what the tool is called? Can't seem to find it on their website

It's the thought that counts:) Yeah, it's a shame there's no way to integrate with Excel for Mac, not a small market either.

First time I see this, pretty cool stuff. Glad to see I potentially have a lot of room for pricing adjustments:)

Thanks, much appreciated!:)

Thanks! I haven't given too much thought to support, but it seems to be a recurring theme here. It's definitely something to think about.

Haha, glad I didn't write that class for nothing:)

Anyway... wow that's some comment! It's a lot of info to unpack! Would love to be able to hit you up with a question or two later if possible, but this gives me a sh*tload of stuff to research, you have my thanks!