Given an Excel spreadsheet with multiple tabs and calculations per tab, I am trying to devise a way to pass in a list of values in JSON format from a mobile application via an API call. The resulting calculations then need to be passed back as the response. The calculations and data returned are proprietary, so security is a concern and externally hosted or cloud-based solutions are not the first choice as I would have to vet their security first.
What I am envisioning is a containerized calculation engine that runs on AWS EC2. When a POST is made to the API endpoint, the API then passes the JSON to the calculation engine, the calculations are made, then a return JSON string with all the calculated values is created and sent back to the API service to be returned as the response to the POST.
At first, I thought maybe I need a business logic engine, such as Drools or JBOSS, but I’m not really engaging business logic or decision making, just calculations. This isn’t really my area of expertise, so I’m not sure the best way to implement this concept. I’m trying to learn.
My questions:
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Is there a calculation engine out there that already does this and has an interface for setting up the calculations it needs to compute (a Drools-type setup)?
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Is there a good reason not to just code all the calculations in the API endpoint itself (will probably be using Python/Django)? I took this micro service approach above, as the calculations are intensive and I thought would be best served by a dedicated engine running in its own container.
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Given number 1 above isn’t viable, what language/server software packages could/should be used to code and run such an engine, given the approach above?
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What am I missing here or not thinking about?