.. _useCases:


Use cases: Excel/GUI vs scripting
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.. contents::
   :depth: 3
   :local:
   :backlinks: entry



Excel / GUI
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Excel and GUI interfaces are fine for push-button, get-results use cases.
It is always possible to build an Excel or a GUI interface on top of a 
Python framework like the one we present here.

However, such an interface would *not* be suitable to automate anything.
Any automated process and/or workflow should be based directly on the
Python framework, see the :ref:`frmchart`.

The standard industry practice of setting up large spreadsheets
containing hundreds or thousands (or more) of such computations in Excel, then
setting up some automated process based on that is a very inefficient, 
error-prone approach.
Formulas and dependencies are opaque, and
auditing big Excel spreadsheets is a very cumbersome, error-prone task.
 
Here are some horror stories: http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm


Scripting
----------------

This is our main use case.
The users set up and run studies/tests/experiments, and produce technical documents.

Instead of setting up Excel spreadsheets in order to run computations, 
the users write short Python scripts.
Anyone with some knowledge of Matlab (or Mathematica, VBA, etc) should be able
to easily do this.

A simple Python tutorial and several example scripts should be more than enough to
quickly get anyone up to speed. 
It is also a good way to keep acquiring Python expertise and, eventually, contribute
to the Python framework.


Legacy or third-party Excel add-ins
----------------------------------------

Existing libraries with Excel interfaces can always be integrated in our Python 
framework as explained in :ref:`excel`.
This is the easy, standard, fallback solution.