Running Microsoft Excel on a Scalable Computing Grid
Sorry, I had to post this one.
Ever written an Excel application which was both data and cpu intensive? Maybe you work for a financial company and want to run your realtime risk analysis off your current trusty Excel spreadsheet. By now, you’ve probably realized that Excel isn’t the quickest thing for pulling 800k records from the database and running the numbers *in real time*, so what do you do?
Enter GigaSpaces…
GigaSpaces provides a grid-based middleware stack built on a unified messaging, distributed datacaching and parallel-processing engine. GigaSpaces leverages Space-Based technology and shares a single, common runtime clustering model.
Apparently, the whole process involves only two steps:
- Use GigaSpaces’ In-Memory-Data-Grid to store and access the data
- Move the logic from the worksheets to run (in parallel) close to the data
What kind of work is involved?
Leverage GigaSpaces’ robust Excel integration and .NET support to connect Excel to the data center
Initial Effort is Minimal
- Replace Excel calls to existing data source(s) with calls to GigaSpaces In-Memory-Data-Grid
The next step is to migrate the algorithms from the Excel client to the servers (running close to the data)
- GigaSpaces’ Microsoft Certified partners are able to assist in
this task
Gotcha! lol
And no, this wasn’t a joke. I did get a good laugh out of it though.
If I had to guess, they are probably laughing as well. All the way to the bank. I’m sure some people are buying this stuff.
GigaSpaces, btw, has some really cool looking stuff. One of these days, I will take the time to dig into it deeper.