The grain of wheat problem on the chessboard, I believe everyone has heard of it. The small 64 checkerboards, because of a simple logical setting, can hold the whole world's grains of wheat. As the most basic and most commonly used business support tool in the office scene, the form tool also has infinite possibilities.
In recent years, technologies such as the Internet, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain have accelerated innovation and are increasingly integrated into the entire process of economic and social development. The rapid development of the digital economy, the wide range of radiation, and the unprecedented degree of influence are becoming a key force in reorganizing global factor resources, reshaping the global economic structure, and changing the global competition pattern.
As the leading, basic and strategic industries of the digital economy, the software and information service industry is the builder and leader of the future digital world. As a well-known provider of software development technology and low-code platform, Grape City has been focusing on developing technologies and tools for more than 40 years, and has been leading the development of domestic control technology and data analysis tools.
In this issue of SegmentFault's exclusive interview with technicians, the interview guest is Yao Yao, a technical evangelist of Xi'an Grape City. Let him share with us the form tool, a seemingly simple product that "costs over 100 million" at every turn. Where is the technical difficulty? What exactly does it solve? What role will it play in our daily work, life and even in the wave of the digital economy?
Interview subject introduction:
Yao Yao, Xi'an Grape City Technical Evangelist, SegmentFault D-Day Technical Lecturer, Microsoft Developer Summit Lecturer. Yao Yao graduated from the Department of Computer Science of Northwestern Polytechnical University. He has been focusing on the use of front-end spreadsheets in the informatization of various industries. He has accumulated rich experience in front-end technology and industry solutions, and has provided technical consultation for companies such as Tencent, Ali, Huawei, and Ping An. Serve.
https://v.qq.com/x/page/y3324hs3rqa.html
The following is the text content of the interview Q&A, slightly edited for ease of reading.
Q1: Can you introduce SpreadJS in one sentence? Extracting three keywords, which three will they be?
In one sentence, I will say this - "The pure front-end table control SpreadJS developed by Grape City can perfectly embed the functions and experience of traditional Excel into the online document system with less than 10 lines of code." Refine three keys In terms of words, I will choose craftsman, ingenuity, and craftsmanship.
First of all, SpreadJS is a development control that is highly similar to Excel in terms of interface and function. It provides functional support for collaborative editing of table documents, data filling, and Excel-like report design, which can help software manufacturers and system integrators effectively deal with data processing. , data sharing and data validity screening and other business needs. In addition to powerful functions, as I introduced in one sentence, SpreadJS can help developers achieve "less than 10 lines of code, perfectly embed the functions and experience of Excel into the online document system without relying on any Excel components. middle."
The reason why this can be done is that Grape City has launched control products that support Microsoft Visual Basic in 1993, and has continued to cooperate with Microsoft to continuously launch front-end development controls and rapid development platforms. The goal is to create a perfect A SpreadJS control that is compatible with Excel's functions and experience and highly matches the needs of online office scenarios.
Through 30 years of intensive cultivation and precipitation of the understanding of the industry, behind this is a group of craftsmen who have polished a craftsman-level product and technology with ingenuity.
Q2: What are the main application scenarios of SpreadJS at this stage? Which problems are mainly used to solve?
The IT business of many enterprises starts with a form. Not only data storage, but also information sharing across teams relies on the representation of tables. The summary calculation of documents, reports, vouchers and basic data is mostly done in the form of tables for analysis and decision-making. Even though the application scenarios of tables are very extensive, with the development of business, users can still put forward higher requirements for the performance and system compatibility of table products, which also forces continuous optimization and iteration of table products.
At this stage, SpreadJS mainly focuses on the future smart office, and is applied to three application scenarios: online collaboration of form documents, data filling and report design, and Excel-like report design. With the API and secondary expansion capabilities provided by SpreadJS, data processing can no longer be limited by hardware, operating system and use environment, helping enterprises to achieve more efficient data processing applications.
For example, the newly designed TableSheet capability in SpreadJS, in addition to the basic WorkSheet functions such as sorting, filtering, styling, row and column topping, and cell editing, also provides practical functions such as relational data management, structured formulas, and data grouping.
Q3: The table tool seems to be simple and easy to implement on the user side, but some people in the industry say that this is a product that "costs hundreds of millions" to make. For a form tool, what is the biggest technical difficulty at the technical level? Xi'an Grape City has been digging deeply in the table field for decades. What do you think is the most important and most solid technical accumulation?
As an application mode after the rise of the Web, B/S unifies the client and concentrates the core part of the system function implementation on the server.
But the problems that follow are multi-browser differences, browser sandboxing mechanism, limited memory access, poor client performance, etc. As a data carrier table, the most direct impact is that it is often "spit out" and stuck, the UI interface is "suspended", and the interface operation is not smooth.
The crux of these problems lies in the fundamentals of the browser's rendering engine: when there are more interface elements, the browser's rendering time will increase significantly, and the memory consumption will increase. This is undoubtedly a difficult problem for table tools with strong calculation logic.
It can be seen that developing a front-end table control needs to overcome these four technical difficulties: performance, memory consumption, reliability and operating experience.
Of course, the most difficult thing in developing a front-end form control is not only the technology, but also the familiarity with form products. Because of purely technical problems, developers can always make up for it with the investment of time and energy. However, the most important point of a truly excellent product is the control of the application scenarios and the details of the user experience, which is also one of the most solid technical precipitations of SpreadJS.
Q4: In the past few years, SpreadJS has been favored by well-known companies such as Huawei, Mingyuan Cloud, Yuanguang Software, Tencent, and NetEase. Its rich application scenarios and solutions have covered projects of many leading customers in more than a dozen industries. For customers, what are the most basic and core hard requirements of table tools, and what functions are "additional surprises"?
As mentioned above, the information sharing in team communication relies heavily on the form of form. With the urgent need for digital transformation of enterprises, the remote office model has been officially opened, and pure online form products have become a must for many enterprises. one of the tools.
Taking a well-known insurance company as an example, institutions at all levels need to regularly report business data upward, and the personnel of the institution analyze and summarize the basic data obtained from the system according to the business, and present it to the superior unit in the form of tables and charts. The traditional Excel offline method is time-consuming, labor-intensive and error-prone; grassroots institutions with high staff turnover cannot use the cumbersome BI system. The self-service report system developed by SpreadJS allows grass-roots business personnel to design and maintain data report templates online according to the traditional Excel method, and realize the regular sending of reports through table data binding. The self-service report system reduces labor costs and lowers the threshold for users. For report viewers, they can directly see the report results embedded in the email, or enter the online report through a link to view real-time data.
However, with the development of form tools, the needs of enterprises and users for document collaboration tools have also changed from "easy to use" to "applicable". How to meet the needs of users in different scenarios is the market's proposal for Saas enterprises and system suppliers. challenge.
Speaking of additional surprises, in addition to industries such as finance and insurance that rely heavily on tables, SpreadJS has quietly changed the way in which informatization is implemented in many industries. In the metrology verification industry, Jilin Ketu Technology Co., Ltd. is a pioneer of informatization. The cloud service SaaS of metrology and inspection provided by the company has its core certificate module polished together with the SpreadJS product line. From the initial online production of certificates, to online printing of certificates, and subsequent batch production of certificates. In the metrology industry, SpreadJS has fully covered functions such as online certificate design, preview, automatic filling of certificate content, vector support for special symbols, and batch PDF certificate generation.
Q5: The IT business of many enterprises starts with a form. Not only data storage, but also information sharing within the team relies on the data structure of tables. In the future smart office scenarios and digital economy, what other needs can a form carry? What kind of roles can you take?
Friends who know form tools will know that the iterative process of form tools is actually an evolutionary history of user needs. The reason why the table tool maintains its vigorous vitality is precisely because people's demand for data processing is always strong. With the development of the Internet, people have more expectations for data table tools in smart office scenarios, such as online functions based on cloud services and enterprise-level collaboration needs, which is a focus at this stage. In particular, the proposal of the concept of digital China in 2022 has effectively promoted the process of online office, making the online collaboration ability of table technology to a new height.
The form tools in the next ten years must have the characteristics of "cloud, intelligence, and data sharing", linking multiple business data scenarios and improving the productivity of enterprises.
For the role of the form tool, I would like to describe it as "down to earth and looking up at the stars". As the most powerful underlying support tool, the form tool must be down-to-earth to develop technology, go deep into the industry, and become the most powerful support for business innovation and technology exploration. But also by virtue of the ability to link data, it may also become a key to drive changes in office scenarios and changes in enterprise production models.
Today, Grape City will practice the mission of "Empowering Developers" and hold the "Grape City Table Technology Seminar and Table Product Launch" with the latest cutting-edge spreadsheet technology, aiming to share the functional characteristics of advanced table technology and discover the best table technology. Practice and promote the digital development of the future office field.
Miss Sifu invites you to come closer to the infinite universe in the form tool.
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