2
Feb
2009
xCelsius: a half baked solution
Before I begin let me just say that I am a big supporter of what Adobe has done with the Flex application. As a result I’ve tried to be un-biast and explicit about my opinion.
I have a few concerns regarding a new product xcelsius. Despite impressive results there are fundamentals shortcommings that will become evident while working with the application.
- Flexibility
- The product is designed strictly to follow a particular approach. This methodology is quite unintuitive and requires the developer to put additional effort when designing the model. The structure is rigid and sometimes confusing. Most of the time it feels like you are trying to create a workaround forcing the intuitive solution in to the Xcelsius model.
- Functionality
- Overall the product looks like a 1/2 backed solution. It is an implementation that is driven by the components provided with the standard load [some are not sufficient in terms of what is expected from a developer's point of view]. The platform is designed to rely on Microsoft Excel but lacks capability to take advantage of basic Excel advantages [like Visual Basic enhancements], the solution is restricted to support only a handful of Microsoft Excel functions/formulas.
- Maintainability & Support [This I believe is a major issue going forward with this solution.]
- The application has no debugger.
- Everything is linked to a Excel cells which can have complicated formulas. IE: cell A references cell B that references C which sums cells D through E which in it self point to cell F.
- During the training we’ve agreed that we would want to call the database to load information directly. This would eliminate the above mentioned complicated point. But still – the developer will be left with a BLANK spreadsheet where one would have to guess where and how the cells are referenced. In laymen’s terms: try figuring out where Matrix!$D$21:$O$21 is coming from.
Overall this is just another attempt to market Adobe’s ability to present data, an attempt that failed miserably.
