The Product Information pages have set out the main features of Logic Architect. On this page we explain why we have made it this way...
Worksheets as Forms
When writing systems using VBA or indeed most other development environments, a forms system is used to create the user interface. But Excel spreadsheets themselves can provide all that is needed for a user interface, are already familiar to the Excel user, and bring with them all Excel's power of formatting, calculation, graphing etc. However there are some elements missing in Excel, and these we have added: window management, separation of data from the worksheet itself, independently scrollable regions and management of in-cell dropdown lists.
User-controlled Reports
Users often have to choose between a fixed report, where it can be difficult to find the information required, or an enquiry system which may be more complex to use. Logic Architect combines these in one package, and gives the report user a very simple enquiry interface. One of the commonest requirements of a report user is to drill down through levels of detail, and this is made particularly simple by allowing a double-click from anywhere on a summary to the associated detail.
Two-way Crosstabs
Most cross-tab systems (such as pivot tables) provide a powerful, but one-way, summarization of data. However a cross-tab format can also be a convenient one for the user to provide data input. Logic Architect allows data to be reshaped as a cross-tab, the user to update it, and the result to be put back to record data. Note that Logic Architect also provides very efficient support for pivot tables, by allowing the creation of CSV files which can be used as pivot table data.
Virtual Arrays
Excel provides powerful funtions which operate on arrays of data, particularly in the financial and statistical areas. These are straightforward to use on a single data set, but much more awkward when several data sets need to be analysed, as the data must be organised into the correct shape and the formulae applied to the correct cells. Logic Architect overcomes this by allowing the repeated construction of virtual arrays of the required shape, to which such formulae can be applied.
Shared Data
Excel allows workbooks to be shared, but the cell-based updating can be difficult to manage. Logic Architect provides multi-user updating through the much simpler mechanisms associated with a database, which will be transparent to the user and only produce an error message in the rare event of two users making simultaneous but conflicting changes.
Data Independence
Excel encourages the user to keep the data within a workbook itself. There are two significant disadvantages to this - as volumes grow the workbook can become very slow, and the data cannot be accessed easily outside the workbook. Logic Architect is designed to provide the user with a choice of data locations - workbooks, simple data files in CSV format, its own database, or external data sources (as read only). Except where the additional capabilities of the database are needed, there is complete interchangeability between formats and the system's operation is identical.
Complex Calculation
Complex calculation in Excel often requires the use of a number of cells to store intermediate results. This is fine for small data volumes, but on larger volumes is awkward as the entire structure has to be replicated on every line. The Tables feature provides a partial solution, but Logic Architect goes further by assembling together the data needed for a calculation from multiple sources and presenting it, one record at a time, to the calculation process.
Decision Tables
Logic can be difficult to write in Excel - If statements can become very difficult to read particularly if they need to be nested. The tabular nature of Excel lends itself to the use of decision tables, which provide a straghtforward way of laying out complex decision processes.
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