Methods and systems for computing algebraic equations are disclosed, with particular relevance to financial analytics. Analytic formulas may be represented as data, and the analytic system may be structured as a kind of an analytic interpretation engine in a database layer of a system. Because analytic formulas may be represented as data in some table or tables, analytics can be added, deleted or modified without having to make changes to the analytic engine's source code. The analytic engine may be implemented in some relational language, such as a dialect of SQL, to manipulate and compute the analytic formulas stored in the database.