Blog Post
hhersch
6 years agoQuickbase Staff
Hey Adam. Glad to hear you are thinking the same way we are about having a relatable experience to Excel.
Quick Base formulas are a proprietary language that run server side. With a goal of democratizing software development, we don't want folks to have to write code to achieve their goals. There are also heavy considerations of performance, and when the the formula evaluates. For example, if you were using a report that had a million records and this was paginated, a _formula_ in JavaScript can only evaluate what is in the browser - which isn't the whole million records. Then there are further considerations with how the work that is done in filters is translated to Quick Base query language. So we definitely need to keep a pretty tight wrap on the core experience. _That being said_, we have plenty that we are working on to make sure the pro developer like yourself feels right at home:
Quick Base formulas are a proprietary language that run server side. With a goal of democratizing software development, we don't want folks to have to write code to achieve their goals. There are also heavy considerations of performance, and when the the formula evaluates. For example, if you were using a report that had a million records and this was paginated, a _formula_ in JavaScript can only evaluate what is in the browser - which isn't the whole million records. Then there are further considerations with how the work that is done in filters is translated to Quick Base query language. So we definitely need to keep a pretty tight wrap on the core experience. _That being said_, we have plenty that we are working on to make sure the pro developer like yourself feels right at home:
- A long-term goal for the new reports is to have a way to run some type of in-line formula while you are viewing the report. Sort of macro-ish. This is all still TBD.
- Our new APIs will be even more rich and easy to use and we specifically plan on making it easier to gather data from a report. This should make it much easier to pull in data to something like Excel, or create a custom UI on top of Quick Base.
- _(fine print - very early)_: We are looking at safe ways to provide further extensibility points to the platform in line for things like what you are talking about.