Software Review of Python tools for Excel

This is a software review for software relating to integrations for, and interaction between, Python and Excel.

In the context of this document a software review is much like a “literature review” as found at the beginning of a thesis. Largely it’s an exploration of the knowledge domain cataloging what can be found and what the state of knowledge is at the moment of writing. This is quite different to a road-test which is often what is meant by a review.

Tabulating such data often doesn’t provide much genuine assistance. To a large extent these tools are found in the open source domain and the motivations of people creating solutions in that space are often addressing a specific “personal” need rather than necesarily considering the development of a product. With that consideration very few of these tools are intended to be precise replicas of each other so comparison tables would be sparse and nothing more than a distraction.

I usually find there is enough value in collating information about the software that exists, grouping the software solutions into categories for comprable solutions and specifying the feature-sets (as advertised). I have found this kind of documentation can provide enough value to enable people to make decisions on whether a particular solution fits what they are looking for. It’s rare to get many more than five or six solutions in the same problem domain or addressing the same problem.

Indices and tables