Vector Space Inc.

TM1 the origins — Part I

August 8th, 2006

I wish I had a penny for every person who has asked me what Applix TM1 is and why we like it so much. Even enthusiastic users often know little of its origins. I thought readers of this website might want to know a little more –. I meant to write a short piece, but it just grew — so I’ve split it into parts. Let me know what you think. . . . David
###In the beginning there was the spreadsheet
TM1 began as a part of the spreadsheet “revolution” in 1984. Dan Bricklin had invented the spreadsheet with VisiCalc in 1979; Lotus 1-2-3 followed in 1983. This new type of computer application exponentially increased the ability of users to apply computer power to problems of their choice without expert intervention. Modelled on a simple grid of paper, the spreadsheet was easy to grasp and easy to use. It could be applied to models large and small, to all manner of reports, fair-sized databases and large calculations involving many variables and formulas.

Unlike many key innovations in computing, the spreadsheet had no roots or theory from the academy, or from the research labs of AT&T, IBM, Xerox or the likes. It had no direct predecessors. It used the unusual but easy declarative programming model, replacing thousands of lines of FORTRAN with a series of formulas that a high school student could understand.

### Success on the bleeding edge
On the bleeding edge of technology, the spreadsheet could easily have faded back to wait for its moment like many other brilliant ideas. But it had some unique advantages. It was extremely accessible to users, immediately useful, and – perhaps most important — appeared just as as microcomputers were coming on the scene. Bricklin’s website tells the story well.

The spreadsheet became the tool of choice for a wide variety of bright and creative people in many fields – financial managers, of course, but also planners, business analysts, economists and scientists.

### Trouble in Paradise

But as spreadsheet use expanded, and people started to use it for more and bigger projects, the simple paradigm of the ruled sheet of paper became unwieldy.

• Large sheets were slow, and pushed the limits of memory. To get around this, users split single spreadsheets into galaxies of sheets linked by external formulas and macros. But this sacrificed transparency; complex systems became large and bug prone.
• The classic spreadsheet has two dimensions but often the data it represents often has three or more. A simple table showing accounts and months is easy. But how does a two-dimensional spreadsheet show a book of income statements for many companies that transact business with each other – or break down a statement by product and region?
• The spreadsheet combines data and program elements in a single object. How can the user (or the auditor) easily tell the difference, and how to find errors buried deep in the sea of formulas? All of these problems have solutions — but they require labor and user discipline.
• Spreadsheets are usually used by a team, passed around from one to the other, with changes being made in different places.  This easily results in a situation where everybody has a slightly different version of the sheet, and the truth is hard to find.

### The next step

Many developers at the time looked for a logical next step for the spreadsheet.

Manuel (Manny) Perez, the “father” of TM1 — now CTO at Applix — came up with a unique combination of features that addressed all of these problems.

Manny created a product that integrated a database into the spreadsheet, keeping an extremely tight, formula-driven link between the two. The database was not a conventional relational database, but a special kind of multidimensional database designed for the types of things spreadshets often do. Each value in the database was identified by a set of strings, one from each of its user-defined dimensions. For example, a budget number was identified as the intersection of “2006”, “January”, “Sales”, “Striped paint”, and “Boston”. The dimensions could specify how to “consolidate” numbers. Using this information, if the user asked for “Eastern Region,” the database would calculate a total of the numbers for “Boston”, “New York” and “Washington”, for instance.

These things may seem routine to OLAP users today, but at the time the term OLAP had not been coined and only a few products did anything similar. A good industry history can be found here.

Already in its early versions, TM1 included a multitude of useful features for its user-developers, including the ability to work with more than one “cube” (or multidimensional table), the ability to store strings in cubes, and the “process” command, which uses a spreadsheet to import ASCII data files into the database.
### Spreadsheet OLAP

Manny’s TM1 spreadsheet had all the usual functionality, but additionally included a set of special functions to retrieve data from and send it to the database. These formulas worked with strings, so a value could be retrieved based upon the text contained elsewhere in the spreadsheet. And they worked just like all other spreadsheet formulas, so that new data could be brought in by simply changing the value of a cell and recalculating.

This innovation solved most of the problems with spreadsheets until then. It separated data from formulas. It made many very large spreadsheets unnecessary by storing their data in the database. And of course it was multidimensional from the ground up.

Additionally, Manny consistently implemented all aspects of use and administration to work from spreadsheets, making the product very friendly to spreadsheet users.

### A move to client-server technology

In 1989, Manny took a further leap, implementing the database side as a server for spreadsheet clients, thus making TM1 a multi-user tool for group collaboration protected by security. This solved the last spreadsheet problem mentioned above — the multiple versions of the truth contained in differet documents.
While early releases included the proprietary spreadsheet, TM1 soon made the leap to enabling Lotus and then Excel spreadsheets to serve as clients. Following this came a series of enhancements and improvements, each remarkable in its own way. Manny kept a very close line of communication with TM1’s key power users and seemed to be exactly on time and in tune with the evolving needs of the product’s base.

### Spreadsheet roots
TM1 continued to be closely connected to its spreadsheet roots.

• Like the spreadsheet from which it sprang, TM1 is a productivity tool for power users – in some ways, a quintessential “horizontal” tool useful in a wide variety of applications.
• Like the spreadsheet, TM1 found an enthusiastic home in financial applications.
• Like the spreadsheet, TM1 enabled clever users to produce one-off, applications of tremendous power.
• Finally, like the spreadsheet, TM1 embodied new concepts which were not originally pioneered by the academies or research institutes.

TM1 quickly caught on with a small group of sophisticated spreadsheet programmers, and developed a very loyal following. Many thought TM1 was the “next big thing”; the logical successor to Lotus 1-2-3, but time was to prove them wrong.

– In the next section, we will discuss some of the further history of TM1 and current developments. We will also reflect on some of TM1’s obstacles and successes, and muse on the many ways in which it was ahead of its time.

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Entry Filed under: General, TM1, Spreadsheets, spreadsheet olap