Developing in Jedox Web can sometimes be a complex business. The Web is deceptively simple; lift the covers a bit and there is a serious array of functionality and flexibility available to you. Having lived in Excel for a very long time, I really appreciate the spreadsheet concept of File Manager. It provides a common security blanket for those of us who have lived most of their working lives tied to a spreadsheet, in one way or another. When you are right in the developer zone, it is easy to forget that you are actually on the web and not in Excel. The design rules for developing a web spreadsheet is therefore very similar to a well-designed spreadsheet; Clean, Simple (to use) and Effective.

Sometimes however, formulas can become very complex, spanning multiple pages and calculating various inputs into those formulas dynamically. So when you get a #VALUE error, the reason for the error is not always very apparent.

I wrote a macro to allow the developer to trace PALO.DATA formulas to break down the various components of the formula and clearly show which intersection point is the cause of the error. See the sample file here.

At the moment, you would have to copy and paste this formula to each template you are working on.  You can easily remove the macro and button after you have finished building the web spreadsheet.

This is one feature I would like to see built in to Jedox in the future…