Translator++ for Excel facilitates structured model design and enables rapid model development and deployment.
Why does converting Excel models into coded programs need automation? Why is it such a big chore? Let's begin with a simple analogy: Today's web designers use visual tools to convert hand-drawn sketches into HTML, DHTML, or XML code. They use these tools because doing the work by hand, in plain mark-up language, especially with a complicated web page layout, is simply too laborious and time-consuming.
Quite similarly, businesses find coding financial or scientific models in a programming language to be a slow, laborious, and error-prone process. You want to focus on the substance, the logic and mathematics of the model, not on adhering to the syntax rules, programming techniques and idiosyncrasies of a programming language. Translator++™ for Excel totally eliminates programming. It does the job of a programming expert, converting your Excel models into programs instantly, error-free, at any time of day or night, and it never needs a lunch break or vacation.
Why use Translator++™ for Excel? The answer is simple: Because it works like clockwork, lightning-fast . Because you can rely on it. Because it's very easy to use and very robust. It is not a half-baked whiz-bang system which is “not quite there, yet” and breaks on anything beyond a toy project. We created a robust, industrial-strength expert system which doesn't make any demands on your time and effort and is always ready to work its magic. It promotes rapid model development and deployment and lives up to your wildest expectations of a model-building Excel compiler is like nothing else we know.
Translator++™ for Excel was designed by savvy financial experts faced with today's most challenging and computationally intensive tasks in the field of financial risk management and actuarial science. They realized they had to automate and streamline the process of model creation and enable fast model deployment in order to meet the challenges of rapidly changing conditions in the financial world. Created by a team of the world's top-notch object-oriented programmers, Translator++™ for Excel is taking over the market for financial, risk, and scientific modeling all over the globe. For several years, Translator++™ for Excel has been used both by our own consultants on challenging assignments and by several of the world's largest financial institutions.. Translator++™ for Excel has helped them achieve an instant competitive advantage in modeling. It is a tried and proven expert system which saves you a lot of time, effort and money. Above all, it saves a lot of aggravation by eliminating programming efforts altogether.
With Translator++™ for Excel, you focus on designing your algorithms in Excel, not on the program development lifecycle, then – at the push of a button – Translator++™ for Excel converts your algorithms, along with all of their associated programs, such as VBA modules, into a C++ function, compiles and links it, making it ready for execution, instantly.
This patented technology was developed by experts dealing with heavy-duty modeling who felt that the solution to meeting the challenges under the real-world's severe time constraints is maximum automation. This technology has been successfully used for several years by a number of large financial institutions.
With over 300 built-in native Excel functions, feature-rich functionality and readily available expertise among professionals throughout the world, Excel has become the de-facto standard toolbox for model development. There are millions of Excel users throughout the world, a significant body of literature, and many communities of interest where Excel expertise is discussed and exchanged.
While we have meticulously converted Excel's functions into C++, we have also created and added to it a nice complement of statistical distribution functions to enable fast model creation in certain areas of finance, insurance, actuarial science and statistics. All of these functions may now be called by any program. This enables every Translator++™ for Excel modeler to write structured programs out of small, easily maintained spreadsheet components. The resulting models may look deceptively light and concise - which is a good thing - yet may be surprisingly comprehensive, which is even better.
Granted, there are certain things that are easier to do in a programming language than in a spreadsheet. Looping, or conditional nested IF, THEN, ELSE, statements, for example. It is an established practice to write such loops and other code using Excel's VBA macros. Translator++™ for Excel converts these VBA macros to compiled C++ code. Virtually any model that can be written in C++, Java or any programming language can now be created with Translator++™ for Excel, only much faster.
Translator++™ for Excel does not impose limitations on how your Excel model is created. Just specify the Input and Output ranges, and at a push of a button, you have a binary model, ready to run. In effect, Translator++™ for Excel instantly compiles (converts) Excel models into machine code or into C++ program, if you so choose.
Microsoft Excel empowers you to model new ideas faster than in other environments. One of the reasons Excel is the preferred model development environment is because you get to see the formulas and the results of the formulas, all along, and as soon as you enter them. You see your mistakes right away and you do not have to engage in tedious debugging, as programmers do. Mistakes in Excel spreadsheets are found and fixed much faster, usually on the spot.
When you apply Translator++™ for Excel to the process of modeling, projects' schedules shrink from months to days, and from hours to minutes. Even if your company already has a team of programming experts, Translator++™ for Excel greatly improves their productivity. The spreadsheets are converted to code at the push of a button, error-free, and the resulting models may be used instantly. Or, if you wish, you can generate just the C++ code, which may be ported to any platform. This means that you can create models for virtually any “intelligent” hardware platform: a hand-held PDA, a smart phone, or a smart card are just a few examples.
With Translator++™ for Excel, the gains in productivity are truly dramatic. To begin with, prototyping in Excel is usually much faster than in a programming language. It is further enhanced and expedited by using Translator++'s for Excel Model Builder and statistical distribution functions that come with the product. As a proud owner of Translator++™ for Excel, once you set up your model in Excel, you're done. There is no more coding, no debugging, no rewriting the programs, and restarting the cycle again and again. Even quality assurance testing is done automatically. All you do is create your prototype Excel model, and at the push of a button, Translator++™ for Excel converts into a ready-to-run executable program, which you can put into production immediately.
Arguably, “benchmarking” Translator++™ for Excel-produced code is meaningless, as ultimately how much faster the machine code runs than the original Excel model is a function of many diverse factors, including the individual model's algorithms, complexity (such as the number of linked worksheets, VBA modules and Add-ins), function nesting, how many thousands of input values are processed, and the file size of the model. In our experience, the performance increase is usually quite dramatic. Instead of taking an involuntary "coffee break" or worse – having to wait on a spreadsheet to recalculate till the next morning – you get the results right away, in a split second to a couple of minutes or so.
Even with advances in the speed of calculations offered by contemporary CPU hardware technologies, the use of co-processors in workstations, and parallel processing in application servers, many financial models need to process hundreds of thousands, even millions of inputs, and the raw speed of execution in models produced with Translator++™ for Excel remains one of its most important benefits.
It is a simple fact of life that programming code runs much faster than the spreadsheet, which does the same calculations. Excel's flexibility and feature-rich environment are features highly important to model developers, but they come at a price – the significant CPU and memory overhead involved in running Excel. Excel's environment is a tradeoff between flexibility of development and the speed of processing. With Translator++™ for Excel, there is no such tradeoff. You enjoy both the power and flexibility of Excel and the raw speed of executing the machine code model. The raw speed of execution is important to the end users. With Translator++™ for Excel your models run dramatically faster, because there is no Excel's overhead. Translator++™ for Excel achieves the same results as a tiger team of programming experts, only much sooner, and at tremendous savings to you.
Essentially, Translator++™ for Excel acts as an expert-level programmer, only better. Translator++™ for Excel codes much faster, much cheaper, and, best of all, there are no errors or bugs. The implications of this are far-reaching: Translator++™ for Excel patented technology empowers spreadsheet users who have no skills in programming, not to mention in creating structured programs in C++. They use Excel as their visual interface and Translator++™ for Excel as their programming team.
Now a two-man shop running a hedge fund can create and use models competing in sophistication and complexity with Wall Street's largest brokerage firms. A small accounting firm may become as sophisticated in its analysis as the finance departments of some of the world's largest corporations. Translator++™ for Excel empowers you to quickly accomplish what you always thought only the big players could do.
Just specify the Input and Output ranges, click the button, and you get your model converted into program code ready to run. No programming knowledge required. No digging into the operating system's folders, files or environmental variables.
Translator++'s for Excel technology allows you to move your spreadsheets to production operations: to front-, middle-, and back-office systems in record time. Your models can be up and running in minutes, instead of weeks or months. No more code management, no more programming life-cycle management, no more budget overruns.
Since Translator++™ for Excel automatically converts the Excel spreadsheet into C++, or machine code, the main portion of work involved in Excel migrations is already done, automatically. No longer are the programmers expected to go through the process of learning and understanding the logic and math behind Excel models, no longer do they have to reprogram the spreadsheets, and troubleshoot the inevitable programming errors.
Now Translator++™ for Excel reprograms your spreadsheets with robotic efficiency, instantly and error-free. Moreover, its DLL Tester component compares the results of the binary model against those of your original Excel spreadsheet on all possible input values, thus completely automating the Quality Assurance function, which it accomplishes in minutes, not days as before.
All of these steps, which are normally time- and labor-consuming, Translator++™ for Excel accomplishes in an instant, saving you a great deal of money and valuable time. As a result of using Translator++™ for Excel, migrating Excel models to executable programs takes minutes, not weeks or months. And, as powerful as it is, Translator++™ for Excel is also one of the simplest programs you'll ever use. Simply load up your spreadsheet, define inputs and outputs, and push a button to let this expert system work its magic.