Yet Another DBA (1/21/2014)
I have seen Excel being used by an insurance actuary and then someone promised that the same equations could be done in a "proper" language and a "proper" client rich application. Over 2 Weeks later 2 developers managed to get the sub 1 second accurate excel spreadsheet calculation to a staggering 10 seconds with bugs in the calculation.This I say would be typical of many companies where IT tries to gold plate a (*&* and tries to impress the company to justify their budget. It is little surprise that the many business units dont want IT development involved.
One reason we're stuck with Excel (and similar solutions).
However, if the spreadsheet gets changed, or altered, as can easily happy in a fluid situation, there's no check on that. Risk in increased, though perhaps negligibly.