An alternative to Oracle's VBCS Plugin for Excel [1]

Oracle's plugin allows you access Fusion REST Endpoints (your business data) from within an Excel workbook but it only works on Windows machines and has some other limitations.

Also added a plugin for inspecting punchout payloads for RSSP [2]

[1] https://vbcs-alt.com/

[2] https://vbcs-alt.com/inspect_punchout/

If you aren't using it for coding or advanced uses like video, etc, you can try running models locally on your machine using Ollama and others like it.

Self plug here - If you aren't technical and still want to run models locally, you can try our App [1]

1] https://ai.nocommandline.com

> Would be even better if there was a installation template that checks if Ollama is installed and if not download it as sub installation first..... Also API to prompt user (ask for permission) to install specific model if haven't been installed.

That's actually what we've done for our own App [1]. It checks if Ollama and other dependencies are installed. No model is bundled with it. We prompt user to install a model (you pick a model, click a button and we download the model; similar if you wish to remove a model). The aim is to make it quite simple for non-technical folks to use.

1) https://ai.nocommandline.com/

Since my App is targeted at developers building on Google Cloud, I focused on

1) Answering questions on Stackoverflow.

    - A few users clicked on the profile and went to our home page

    - A few of my responses involved a link to post on our blog (only did this where it was absolutely necessary)

2) Answering questions on Google Cloud reddit channel and Google Cloud Community (forum)

Still working on https://nocommandline.com which started out as a GUI for Google App Engine & Datastore Emulator.

I recently added support for Cloud Run and am now building it out. Support for Cloud Function is also on the road map.

I’m also still maintaining the patch [2] I created which allows you run App Engine Python 3 Apps with dev_appserver.py on Windows. To test App Engine bundled API/services, you need dev_appserver.py

[2] https://github.com/NoCommandLine/dev_appserver-python3-windo...

An alternative to Oracle's VBCS Plugin for Excel [1]

Oracle's plugin allows you access Fusion REST Endpoints (your business data) from within an Excel workbook but it only works on Windows machines and has some other limitations

[1] https://vbcs-alt.com/

I usually try to solve my own problem.

E.g. I use/used Google App Engine (GAE)[1] a lot. When Google deprecated the GUI, I found it inconveniencing using the CLI. Secondly, there was no GUI for the Datastore Emulator. So, I set out to build something for both of them [2] and then decided to put it out there for others.

Along the line, it turned out that Google didn't support using one of their tools "dev_appserver.py" for building Python 3 Apps on Windows and so I also built a patch for it [3]

1) https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard

2) https://nocommandline.com

3) https://github.com/NoCommandLine/dev_appserver-python3-windo...

I try to stick to serverless rather than trying to manage any infrastructure

1) Google App Engine Standard. Datastore for DB.

2) For anything that won’t work with the above, then it’s Google Cloud Run

Why not just use Google Forms? Our website uses it.

1) You can customize it and add your company logo/image. Can also limitedly change colors to match your branding.

2) It can be set to notify you of new submissions (ie each time someone fills it and submits it, you get an email)

3) It’s free and easy to set up.

4) You get a link which you place behind a ‘Contact Us’ text on your website. When users click it, it opens up the form.

Usually the website already exists. I fought with the same problem and even the cheapest service was charging a really high 5$/month,which immediately loses me as a customer, because that's the price of a vps and at that point I can do it. my solution was a gcloud function that disables functionality if billing reaches a certain threshold (the free tier limit), but if I had to pay 20 bucks per year, I would have, but nope, everybody charging more than a vps.