Question

I shall try and keep my scenario as brief as possible and to the point.

The office I’m currently working for uses Lotus Smartsuite on Windows 98 / XP, using lots of Lotus Script to tie together Lotus 123 and Lotus Word Pro documents. They also make heavy use of the Lotus Object Linking functions. I shall describe its behaviour below:

You can fill rows and columns in a 123 Spreadsheet with data galore, style it and format it any way you like and define it as a range (nothing unique here). However, you can then copy that range and paste it as a link in a Lotus Word Pro document. This link is then categorised by its range name, so expanding the range back in the 123 file causes the table in the Word Pro Document to expand. This link also carries with it all the formatting and styling of the cells in the 123 Spreadsheet. As I imagine you are now aware, this link is completely live, you can double click anywhere in the object and it opens up the 123 file for editing, and all changes go backward and forward between the two documents. Most of the data retrieved from testing equipment is stored in these 123 spreadsheets and then parts of that are linked into a final Lotus Word Pro report document sent to the customer.

Note: Just to be clear, this is NOT the same as a DDE link in Open Office, which seems to allow for copying of a non-defined range of cells to be imported into a document where all formatting is lost and editing back and forth is not straight forward. It also behaves differently to an OLE object, which seems to only import the entire Spreadsheet rather than a small subsection of it.

However, in recent years, support this older software (Lotus) is becoming more difficult, especially with regards to sending customers documents (Lotus word Pro files are generally unsupported by more modern Office Tools) and technical support for Lotus Smartsuite seems to be practically non-existent these days. Also, with the fear of on going development in a scripting language no-longer being practised by mainstream IT technicians, on-going development and support seems futile. Once the guys who wrote it move on to other things, we will be left with spaghetti script in a language nobody can help us with.

So, we have this goal of “modernising” our IT system by the end of the year. Linux is becoming a very viable option too (No doubt Debian or a derivative), but Open Office doesn’t seem to have the linking capability mentioned above. The reason this linking is so important is because the veterans of the office are so used to working this way – storing data in the spreadsheet, linking back to it later in their Word Pro documents, etc. I think they are more than keen to keep this practice going and we have found no equivalent of it in modern office tools (as was requested of me). I can see, as a software engineer (fluent in many languages), how this practice is not the safest or best way of using and storing data (databases spring to mind), but I was wondering if someone could give me a few other good reasons as to why this is bad practice in the work place (I was always in the belief that you should keep your data away from your reporting and formatting, the two should never be entwined – this looks like spreadsheet hell to me) … or why this is a good thing to keep doing!?

So, for those of you still with me, I guess what I am asking is:

1. Is this practice of storing data, formatting it in spreadsheets and importing that directly back and forth between word documents good or bad, and what can be done about it? I guess I’ll need to prove my point in case either way for this.

2. Are there ANY modern alternatives to this linking method (regardless of weather it is good or bad practice or not) out there for Linux or Windows? This link MUST carry formatting as well as dynamic range sizes (DDE links don’t seem to be the answer).

3. What would your solution be if you had to start from scratch? Store everything in databases and use SQL to simply ask for the data you need in your word documents? How would you do this? What software would you use?

Any help with this scenario would be more than helpful, or if you know anywhere I should go to ask for advice, that would be appreciated too.

Thank-you for reading!

Answer 1

My suggestion is to first take a step back. What is the benefit to the way things are done now? Is it just a habit that is tough to break? Is there any reason the documents and spreadsheets need to be maintained and linked the way they are, or is it just a requirement because ‘that’s how it was done before’?

If you can remove that requirement, you have a lot more options and you’re building a system that’s easier to understand and maintain.

Regarding question 1, I believe there’s nothing wrong with storing data in spreadsheets, especially if the end-users need to create and maintain them and development staff is limited. Some questions are whether that data needs to be secured, is related between spreadsheets, is duplicated across the company, or should be shared in a better way across the company. If any of those are true then a centralized database would make more sense. Personally I’d want any valuable data safely stored in a database where it can be managed, access to it can be controlled, it can be easily backed-up, etc.

Regarding question 2, you can do the same thing in Microsoft Office. You can either link the documents, so that the data stays in the source excel doc but appears in the word doc, or you can embed the excel spreadsheet within the word doc.

You might want to look at Microsoft Access for storing the data and generating reports. Or you could build an application using a relational database back-end and reporting front-end. The possibilities are wide-open. It really depends on where the expertise lies within the company.

If it were me I’d probably use a SQL Express back-end (it’s free) and a custom ASP.NET MVC application for generating the reports, but that’s just where my expertise lies.