[denster]

I'm biased [1], but agree with serjester -- the spreadsheet needs to be a part of the application authoring process.

For data access, a tool like this needs to support:

- lightweight: the spreadsheet itself

- medium-weight: a built-in set of functions for storing/fetching data (from a built-in, behind-the-scenes DB)

- heavyweight: functions for accessing data in an existing corporate DB, queue (Kafka, JMS, etc), and other sources in real-time

[1] Founder of https://mintdata.com, where we think spreadsheets have a bright future in this space :)

[fragmede]

What definition of "real-time" are you using here? I presume you're not using the RTOS[] definition, so I'm just curious what workload you would consider "heavyweight" and what kind of real time guarantees that means the ideal system would have.

[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_operating_system