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TimeScape for Office
Integration and programming
This is a set of add-ins which significantly extend the capabilities of Microsoft Excel to include over 250 additional worksheet functions for loading, saving, analysing and pricing instrument data through TimeScape.
The toolkit also includes working examples for every function, extensive on-line help and a number of useful end-user tools for managing names and formulas within workbooks that greatly simplify general workbook management within Microsoft Excel.
Examples of TimeScape worksheet functions that are provided include:
- Basket analysis
- Data query and save
- Histogram analysis
- Instrument pricing and risk
- Line/multi-dimensional regression
- Periodic data analysis (such as high-low-close, average, period volatility, user-defined etc)
- Time-series analysis (such as correlation, volatility, beta, tracking error and correlation matrix calculation)
- Yield curve pricing and analysis
In addition, TimeScape QL+ can also be used to execute complex queries from Excel and return results to a workbook for further analysis and/or charting. The advantage of this approach is that data sets that may involve many millions of data points (e.g. tick data), and are traditionally beyond the capability of Excel to hold in workbooks, can be analysed externally to Excel and then only the summary results that are actually of interest actually returned to the user in Excel.
These queries can involve any business object that has been registered with TimeScape, making it easy to perform highly sophisticated analysis in very simple workbooks. This is illustrated in the screenshot above, where a Forward Implied Volatility Matrix calculation is being performed outside of Excel. The calculation shown requests various grid points from a business object that handles all the data load and analysis behind the scenes (time-series, historical dividends and yield curves) and simply returns the resulting data set to Excel.
In addition, end users need only to enter the parameters on the worksheet that are needed to qualify the calculation. All other data is loaded in background by the TimeScape Query Server, freeing the workbook of the need to manage that data. In this way, workbooks remain light-weight and manageable, sharing the same server-side TimeScape business logic that is being used elsewhere.
The ability to access consistent algorithms and data within a unified environment is also obviously a vital requirement given the regulatory demands that are being placed on companies today. TimeScape for Office provides the bridge to allow those demands to be met whilst still allowing the flexibility of Microsoft Excel (the Front Office desktop tool of choice) to be harnessed.