anakic

Nice to hear definitely. That's the vibe I was going for, but it feels a bit clumsy. Maybe I should have use QueryThingie instead:)

Well, $99 seems fair to me as well:) The reason for the low price now is I need the users and word of mouth. I'm well aware it's worth a whole lot more than $19, but right now I just don't know how to get it in front of potential customers other than by keeping a low price for a month or two.

I'd certainly like that.

I like your comment:) That's the home version of it, the commercial is $149/year per machine. Basically I need traction, and a community of users, so I'm aiming for it being affordable for people to use at home. I'm hoping this will transfer into people wanting to use it in their companies which is where I charge money. As I mentioned before, I'm a complete noob in business and marketing so I might be going about this very wrong. In any case, I'm very open to suggestions.

Both really. Some times you don't need the overhead of a database, you just want to do a damn join in Excel or something.

But also, it has the option to connect to an external database. When connecting, you can pull Excel tables into the database as temp tables, do queries (or import the data from the temp tables into permanent tables), and write results back into Excel. What's more you can automate this, even without VBA.

Absolutely true. Having trouble coming up with a name. Open to ideas. Currently I'm thinking "Tabularity", I've bought the domain. Not 100% set on it, but I'm definitely set on changing the name.

Good point. I added that in the FAQ section in the Guide, but really it should also be on the pricing page. I'll add it.

Need to come up with an algorithm for this now, fingers crossed I actually end up doing the calculation:) Half a ton for you too!:)

Are you kidding, dude I love you:) It was a huge moral boost for me at the time, and probably the reason I ended up committing to this project full time!

If it happens, I will find you and make sure you get TONS of beer delivered to your doorstep:)

Thanks! Something like a site wide license? Any suggestions on a price point for this? I'm decent at development, but I'm a complete noob at marketing and business.

Unfortunately no. The way it integrates into Excel is only available in Excel for Windows. Excel for Mac just doesn't have many ways you can talk to it (that I'm aware of).

Yeah, it was simple enough to change and VS was already open, so I figured why not change it right away... Thanks for the kind words!

Thanks a lot! Gosh, analytics instantly going up:)

Is the change in this posts name due to it being treated as a duplicate? My analytics have gone waaay down since that:(

Also, I wasn't the one posting it back then. I had posted it on reddit, and someone from there crossposted it to hn. Does that count?

Hi Dang. That's true, it's been less than a year:( It was a hobby project back then and I've switched to full time now. Trying to launch it properly now. I've done serious work in the meantime and lowered the price, and I think it's worth another go. Rules are rules though. Should I remove it?

Thanks a lot, I'm pretty proud of it!:) That's a good point, the version isn't really the important part, will do.

(I'm the author)

The project was initially a hobby but as of this month is my full time occupation.

So the plugin is called ThingieQuery, and it's basically for people who spend time in Excel and are familiar with SQL. The point is to make working in spreadsheets easier, possibly even enjoyable...somewhat.

The database engine that does all the heavy lifting is SQLite, it has access to Excel tables through an adapter layer I built, and it can also call VBA functions (you can call them from your SQL queries).

I'm particularly happy with my own SQL parser that I built for it. I use in the editor so it now understands SQL and can do all the things the big boy sql tools can:

- pretty decent code completion (it's context sensitive in what it offers, offers keywords as well as identifiers, understands aliases, derived tables, common table expressions)

- error detection (syntax errors, undefined symbols, some semantic errors)

- function insights (shows function documentation and parameter info while typing)

- SQL auto-formatting

- a few other things (star expansion, symbol disambiguation, bracket matching, same reference symbol highlighting)

So anyway, take a look and ideally try it. Feedback is appreciated and most welcome.

Hey Pete, I just wanted to say thanks for posting this, it was a huge deal for my page views. Between reddit and hackernews, my webpage went from having about 100 visitors/day to having 10k in a single day! Thanks a bunch, and if you tell me where you live (maybe via comments on my page), I'll make sure you get beer to delivered to your doorstep:)

Thanks, I'm very glad to read it, and I'm excited as heck at all the positive feedback!

Yeah, I'm hoping it will be used that way also, since you can read and write data both by hand and using SQL and immediately see the effects.

Yes, it will work on Office 2007, 2010, 2013 on both platforms (x86/x64)

Point taken:) I have no idea where I got the "paint me xyz" from. Thanks for pointing it out, I changed it to "color me interested"

Even basic SQL can make a lot of things easier in Excel, and SQL is not that complex so it might be doable. And the plugin is perfect for teaching SQL to someone, you can immediately see the effects of queries on data. Just sayin... :)

Glad to hear your coworkers are excited!:) I'd love to support mac but unless excel 2016 includes VSTO, it won't be doable.

Good question. Unfortunately no, not yet. It's not context sensitive, actually it's as dumb as a brick:) If you enter the name of a table followed by a dot, it will offer only the columns from the table. Other than that, it offers pretty much all objects and filters them as you type.

I've been wanting to implement a SQL parser (at least for SQLite) so I can offer meaningful autocomplete, and some other nice features, but it was a lower priority than other things. I've done some work with Antlr a few years ago, but I'm itchin' to roll my own since I'm already dusting off my compiler theory books...

Anyway, why not give it a try, the trial is free:)

You are very welcome!:)

It supports connecting to PostgreSQL and MSSQL currently. When you connect to an external engine it opens up a connection, and copies selected Excel tables as temp tables to the destination DB. This makes it easy to combine excel data with existing db data in your queries, and also to move data in easily in either direction.

It uses low level bulk copy operations when importing excel data so it's pretty fast. I did not yet implement support for Oracle because it doesn't have session level temp tables, only global temp tables... I'll see what I can do there.

I haven't used the MySQL Excel plugin so I can't comment on its features...