Avoid repetition

Traditional spreadsheets force you to duplicate a formula across columns or rows, leading to fragility when the formula needs changing. In Resolver One, you can use column or row formulae instead. This way, you define a single formula that describes the column or row, and that will be repeated for every cell. Updating the formula automatically cascades the change down, so you won't have to worry about outdated formulae.

See column and row formulae in action in a short screencast: Column-level Formulae (2m36s).

Increase robustness

Another major source of defects in spreadsheets is the use of cell references that carry little semantic meaning, forcing developers to backtrack a great deal in order to understand what a specific formula is really doing. Resolver One has named ranges and headers to help with this.

See these features in action in a short screencast: Named Ranges & Headers (1m37s)

Reduce complexity

Resolver One allows you to replace complex formulae with a custom function that has a descriptive name, well-defined parameters and can be tested and documented.

If you have a created a collection of useful functions you'd like to reuse, you don't have to copy and paste them in every spreadsheet you create! You can store them all in an external Python or C# module and import them in your spreadsheets instead.

Separation of concerns

Sometimes reusing functions is not enough — you'll want to reuse a complete spreadsheet model. For example, you might want to aggregate and create reports based on data in your model. Using Resolver One's unique RunWorkbook function, you are able not only to access data from a different spreadsheet, but also to run the same calculations with different data — without changing the original file!

See RunWorkbook in action in a short screencast (5m27s).

Track changes

Resolver One documents are based on the flexible XML standard, rather than a proprietary binary format. This makes them very friendly to a wide array of revision control systems, including the industry leader, Subversion.

Promote auditability

Because you can look at your spreadsheet as a computer program, and you are able to see the sequence of calculations that are carried out to recalculate it, you can much more easily work out precisely what it's doing — which makes auditing your models much easier.