title: Writing a web application in excel? Why not?
body: <p>Before you start flaming, I'm going to tell you that I am trying to convince myself that this is a bad idea.</p>
  
  <p>Basically, I'm trying to create a website with some basic accounting functions. My friend, a consultant who only knows excel, asked if this could be an excel spreadsheet instead of a web interface.</p>
  
  <p>I found myself thinking, why is excel not the better tool in this case? It has all the tools a web2.0 app has (scripting, access to a db, basic formatting), and is made for accounting. You could basically use excel to write a program that fetches data from an SQL database, populates some cells, and use formulas for the rest.</p>
  
  <p>Is there precedent to using excel as one would use the browser to make an ajax-y web2 app?</p>
  
  <p>Why is this a bad idea?</p>
  
  <p>Update: just to clarify I meant this to be more a "rhetorical" discussion. I'm not sure why the rest of the message didn't clarify that...</p>