After reading BI’s Dirty Secrets – Why Business People are Addicted to Spreadsheets and the post it points to, I started to wonder if the spreadsheet -> topic maps path was in the wrong direction?
For example, Spreadsheet Data Connector Released bills itself:
This project contains an abstract layer on top of the Apache POI library. This abstraction layer provides the Spreadsheet Query Language – eXql and additional method to access spreadsheets. The current version is designed to support the XLS and XLSX format of Microsoft© Excel® files.
The Spreadsheet Data Connector is well suited for all use cases where you have to access data in Excel sheets and you need a sophisticated language to address and query the data.
Do you remember “Capt. Wrongway Peachfuzz” from Bullwinkel? That is what this sounds like to me.
You are much more likely to be in Excel and need the subject identity/merging capabilities of topic maps. I won’t say the ratio of going to Excel versus going to topic maps, it’s too embarrassing.
If the right direction is topic maps -> spreadsheet, where should we locate the subject identity/merging capabilities?
What about configurable connectors that accept specification of data sources and subject identity/merging tests?
The BI user sees the spreadsheet just as they always have, as a UI.
Sounds plausible to me. How does it sound to you?