After spending many years working for the financial services industry in various positions inside custom software development teams. I realized that the main pain point is a lack of rapid data management tools, making it easy for anyone to store information, visualise their data and automate workflows from a single place

Quite often, custom software teams can’t cope  with ever changing requirements. As a result, business users (usually tech savvy) turn to Excel, some bits of Python and SQL in order to automate and improve their data management workflows. With respect to the business users we worked with, most of them are super smart and intelligent people, they don’t know how to write maintainable, well architected, robust and scalable software. That is why their excel “systems” always fall short. And over time, these “systems” become unmaintainable, unreliable and often do not accurately produce vital figures.

The solution to the problem is a SQL centric low code data management platform that allows business users and IT professionals to rapidly iterate and produce custom solutions in a streamlined and scalable way.

As a first step we started with improving tooling infrastructure around SQL server databases. Making sure that anybody can easily access data, manage access controls and modify/load data easily while maintaining data integrity and consistency.

Main links

• Worksheet Systems App
• Sample Apps Gallery
• JSPython Playground
• Workseets Data Studio
• Docs (in progress)
• UI Components documentation (in progress)

Core components

The following components diagram depicts main Worksheet Systems parts

SQL Data Api - RESTful API for data access and manipulation

SQL Data Api allows you to easily expose your SQL Server data over to internet / intranet users. You can use RESTful API for data access and manipulation. This can be used for the sharing and collaboration of any kind of data and is supported in a number of data-related applications and technologies. You can permission other applications or custom workflow to consume your SQL Server with C#, Python, JavaScript open source libraries

• Source Code for Python SQL Data Api Client on GitHub
• Source Code for C# SQL Data Api Client on GitHub
• Source Code for JavaScript SQL Data Api Client on GitHub

JSPython - building custom workflows

Obviously, you can always drag ‘n drop boxes around and build simple logic. But, in no time you will hit a wall and your custom logic will become unmaintainable. To solve this, we created a Python interpreter - JSPython. Your custom scripts can securely run in the browser, and at the same time you can run it server side with NodeJS. We choose Python’s syntax as it is the most popular and friendly programming language. And we combined it with a rich JavaScript ecosystem, So, you can call any JavaScript library with Python-like syntax (including asynchronous promises, RxJS etc). Check out the open source project

Source Code on GitHub

Data Visualization and UX

Although, we believe that user business users should be able to explore (if permissioned) databases themselves. Sometimes, we need to give them a better user experience, like: interactive dashboards that combine multiple data sources or more robust data collection / user input forms with build-in validation and transformation logic. For that purpose, we’ve built another open source library - ngx-dynamic-components. That eventually is bundled with Bootstrap (the world’s most popular front-end open source toolkit) and JSPython.

Source Code on GitHub

Data processing / Data wrangling

Although, JSPython exposes all array and object manipulation functions from JavaScript. That wasn't enough. So, we created an open source library - datapipe-js. dataPipe-JS is a data manipulation and data processing library for JavaScript. Inspired mainly  from LINQ (C#) and Pandas (Python) and carefully brought into the JavaScript world. This provides a powerful API for data loading, data transformation and other helpful data manipulation functions.

Source Code on GitHub

Worksheets Data Studio IDE and run-time

You should look at Worksheet Systems as of two parts:

• Worksheets Data Studio - is a developer friendly online IDE and a set of reusable open source libraries for data engineers, business analysts or software developers. You can use our online IDE as well as VS Code and  keep your source code in the source control of your choice
• Worksheet Systems - run-time. All applications that you’ve built with our low code data management platform, can run as a stand-alone web app or scheduled batch job on a NodeJS server

Worksheets Data Studio - Online IDE

Worksheets Data Studio is your ultimate online IDE for all your data management tasks, building custom apps and sharing/collaborating SQL databases. Core components being:

Online SQL Client

Connect to any of your SQL databases on-premises and in the cloud, Which enables multi user collaboration, advanced querying, exploring and modifying data. That will allow you to:

• Quickly find a database table/view/stored procedure of your interest
• Use advanced Excel-like data filters with useful information of rows count, groups etc.
• Create Custom Data Queries. You don’t always want (or don’t have permissions) to create a SQL View, stored procedures or write complicated queries in the SQL Server database. So, you can create a query and save it separately, share or collaborate with your friends, colleagues or clients
• We made modifying your data in the SQL table easy. We’ve built a number of useful features to modify data in your database. (e.g. bulk edit, foreign fields, import/merge from excel etc)
• Import data with a smart merge feature that ensures control and consistency over your data
• Once you connected to your database, you can consume your SQL through a secure RESTFull service and we have built Python, C#, JavaScript or JSPython SQL Data Api clients for you
• Sharing and collaboration is as easy as passing a URL to your colleague or client.

Custom Scripting

Use JSPython - a custom scripting language to process data, automate workflow or integrate with other systems

• Worksheets CLI - command line interface to work with Worksheet Systems content offline - VS Code or keep it in the source control (GitHub, Bitbucket etc)
• JSPython CLI - command line interface torun your JSPython scripts in the NodeJS

Custom Apps and Interactive Dashboards

Build interactive dashboards or input forms with our bootstrap based dynamic components library.

Browse our Sample Apps Gallery

Who should use it

Our audience usually falls into the following roles:

• Software Developers. There is no need to follow ever changing JavaScript frameworks and tools. We’ve got you covered. You can leverage well documented Bootstrap based libraries for web design and layout and use JSPython scripting facilities for your data processing and custom workflow development
• Data Analysts / Business Analysts. We offer a rich set of exploratory data analysis features to stay on top of your data engineering workload
• Business Users. We enable those who deeply understand business processes and workflows to contribute (or even build themselves) to the custom data management solutions. There is no need to understand underlying technologies when you need to craft an interactive dashboard or create a custom input form that fits well into your particular workflow, and share to collaborate. Or, you can simply benefit from the exploratory data analysis features we offer

Issues & Features requests

If you find any issues while working with a system, we’d love to hear from you. To report bugs or send feedback, please submit a new issue here:

Worksheet Systems Issues

Or simply e-mail to info_at_worksheet.systems

Professional Services and support

Worksheet Systems is designed, built and supported by FalconSoft. Falconsoft Ltd is a London based IT services company which offers professional services to help businesses achieve their enterprise architecture efficiency goals. Using FalconSoft’s expertise and unique software tools, businesses are able to gain control of their internal and external information, streamline data management processes and derive optimal returns from their enterprise IT investments.

Enterprise level - on-premise installation

With our enterprise offerings you can enjoy an entire low code data management platform behind your firewalls, integrated with your security (Office 365 or Google Identity). So, you decide who should see what and how to optimize hardware for each particular workflow.