Tell us what you use koala for.

[vallettea]

hello, I'm one of the core contributors of koala (enabling fast excel calculations in python). I wanted to know if we should push some more on the project. As an open source library, it is nice to have a little feedback from the small but growing community of users.

@mkpathcreate, @Brad-eki, @kuzaxak, @enalpha, @ak2k, @JeffStahler, @srp-synengco, @GliderGeek, @ulternate, @Auhill, @flacomenoide, @PabloRoque, @gustaveiffel, @httpszach, @Alerq, @infinity77

You've used more or less the library and I would be really pleased if you answered theses few questions :

• did you manage to use the library for your own spreadsheet ?
• if yes, was it a game changer for speed, automation, parallelization or what ?
• do you use koala on side projects or for your work ?
• if yes, can you share your usecase ?

Also feel free to make any comments. Thanks for your time.

[Brad-eki]

• did you manage to use the library for your own spreadsheet ? We have used the library to read our spreadsheet and calculate results.

• if yes, was it a game changer for speed, automation, parallelization or what ? The game changer was automation.

• do you use koala on side projects or for your work ? We are using it for work.

• if yes, can you share your usecase ? The use case is to automate scenario calculation of financial models associated with mathematical models.

[mkpathcreate]

did you manage to use the library for your own spreadsheet ?

We are testing this for our use case.

if yes, was it a game changer for speed, automation, parallelization or what ?

Not yet, we are started on something similar, but found Koala and started testing it. If this works, we will continue on this and contribute where ever applicable. We where on plans to update pycel since it had become old, but found koala.

do you use koala on side projects or for your work ?

For a side project.

[ulternate]

• did you manage to use the library for your own spreadsheet ? Yes, to calculate required cells.

• if yes, was it a game changer for speed, automation, parallelization or what ? Automation, many calculations had to be run from a worksheet that couldn't easily be converted due to many dependencies.

• do you use koala on side projects or for your work ? For work.

• if yes, can you share your usecase ? Calculating expected energy performance based upon supplied test result data.

[Brad-eki]

Hi @vallettea, did this come to anything?

[vallettea]

it came that we did not pursued the project haha !

[vallettea]

but i guess there is quite some interest now. anyway we're doing other stuff now

[Brad-eki]

Fair enough.

Maybe on the next opportunity... :D

[Brad-eki]

To further the use case:

I work in the renewable energy industry. As stated before we have been using Koala with Excel to integrate financial models with technical models and have recently started using Koala in conjunction with xlwings to develop tools for technical model development. The pairing of Koala and xlwings is incredible.

I have recently found PyCel's connection with PyXll. I think I can see a pathway to use Koala with xlwings to achieve basically the same synergy.

I am yet to experience PyXll but it appears between Koala, PyCel, Functions, Schedula, PyXll and xlwings there is a lot of disparate attempts to solve essentially the same problem but all of them fall short on one aspect or another. There is likely to remain a need for a number of solutions to address different problem domains but as a user of these libraries, add-ins and tools it would be great to know that there is one point of reference for the Python implementation of the Excel functions which are capable of being re-purposed where necessary.

My thoughts on cementing Koala as the library for my current use is:

• ensure the existing function support has the Python implementation behaving the same as the Excel counterpart (recent discussions on MID demonstrate some of them may not necessarily be compliant),
• support more functions (finance applications will need the time and date and text processing ones, sci/eng will obviously need the number related ones)
• become an official extension for xlwings (in a reasonably simple way)

My thoughts on becoming a killer app:

• either become the "go-to" library for Python definitions of Excel functions or help/encourage support whoever else will be and depend on them (eg; become a dependency of PyCel and Functions/Schedula or leverage them)
• consider deeper integration between Koala and xlwings such that the state of Excel can be updated in Koala while working in the open workbook, removing the need for reading the workbook each time the xlwings COM server starts and also having to re-load the workbook when formulas are changed.