Comments on: Excel Is The World’s Most Used “Database”

By: Charles Var

Charles Var — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:27:00 +0000

TrackVia.com

By: Nate

Nate — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:25:00 +0000

I think having spreadsheets that have VBA coding in them to extend the functionality may be a partial answer. At least for Revision Control.

http://www.run8tech.com/tools.aspx

By: Terri Lawton

Terri Lawton — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:23:00 +0000

Great post. Here’s a post that shows you how to convert your excel to web in minutes http://blog.caspio.com/integration/convert-ms-excel-to-web/

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By: Excel training

Excel training — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:54:00 +0000

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By: Tramadol Addiction

Tramadol Addiction — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:33:00 +0000

excel are work everytime as a database.

By: jollygomez

jollygomez — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 02:55:00 +0000

Great written article regarding excel.Indeed excel is very useful and most widely used database.I really liked your written skill.Thanks a lot for sharing.Keep sharing always.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 11:33:00 +0000

Microsoft excel as
a database for keeping track of information and basic businesses processes.
This blog is very nice.I like it

By: ms excel training

ms excel training — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:15:00 +0000

Its rightly said
that excel is the most used database.It has very functions and are very
useful.I really liked your article.Thanks for sharing such a knowledgeable
stuff.

By: Rico

Rico — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:25:48 +0000

Tech savvy? If they were tech savvy, they could easily have built something for MySQL.

Has nobody ever touched the largest desktop database out there? FileMaker is a great tool for this stuff.

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By: Phyroxis

Phyroxis — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:13:57 +0000

The old adage, if it ain't broke don't fix it, comes to mind.. What exactly is the problem here?

By: Richardc_2074

Richardc_2074 — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:40:29 +0000

So the real problem is not the use of Excel but that we've got to teach people to use cvs and get everyone to work with csv files.

“Crappy way to do things, but that’s what worked well.” – a common theme of life in general really.

By: robertn

robertn — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:17:07 +0000

Maybe the problem is not the spreadsheet but the storage and/or engine behind it. What if all the front side manipulations were still there for all the power users but the back side stored the data in a whole new way that would extend the capabilities more toward “databases”? And of course for sharing, the presentation of this spreadsheet would need to be through a browser ala Google Docs or Windows Live.

By: Jason L. Baptiste

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:39:57 +0000

Awesome. There's a very good chance it will go open source. Will drop you an email re: this. As long as it's a start, that's what matters .

By: Jason L. Baptiste

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:38:58 +0000

Excel makes non geeks feel like empowered geeks, which is great. Excel is awesome at what it does here. My gripe is this: why haven't we made something better/evolutionary? Take the best parts of what Excel does as a database and build something people love. ie- fill in the gaps.

By: Jason L. Baptiste

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:37:57 +0000

That's a really good point and one I should probably update the article with.

By: Jason L. Baptiste

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:37:21 +0000

Ragic looks really cool. I'll play around more for an in-depth review.

By: Gigady Gigady

Gigady Gigady — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:04:00 +0000

Very interesting concept. I had an actual friend tell me that he actually looks forward for the half hour/day process it takes with excel duties though. It makes him feel more productive and in control of his information. He also mentioned that his IT's way of handling this process was effecient but he didn't like the fact that after the transfer he then now needed to go through IT for any little change. In the end it was still a process and he felt better by being in control of it himself.

By: Bbalok

Bbalok — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:53:06 +0000

I face the Excel versus a real data base system every day. Our company got to big and spread out geographically to use Excel and pass around a spread sheet for some of it's "applications" and that is when IT gets involved. One constant in these developed systems, I still have to provide a method to either dump it to Excel or import from a spread sheet.

IT does take a long time to develop and deploy a system and seems to make it complicated from the users perspective. A lot of times it is complicated and IT wants to do the job correctly and takes the extra time to model a data base before development. The user just starts typing into cells and the data base evolves with the spread sheet.

I have taken a new attitude and started to create some loosely structured data base systems that grow with the users needs. Not what I learned in school but at least they have an IT person involved. When it grows to be to big for the spread sheet I already have some structure and rules with the data, even if the users did not know it, and can now do the job for real.

By: Steven

Steven — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:45:59 +0000

There may be no solution…it has been this way for a very long time…

On my very first job (back before dinosaurs roamed the earth), as “the computer guy” for a decent-sized hospital's administration, the PC I was given had multiple low-end database packages installed (dBase II, dBase III+, Paradox and Reflex)… yet everything was done in Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets. When I moved their data into databases and produced reports showing what they asked for, they wanted to be able to make spreadsheet-like changes (not just formatting, but actually changing the data).

It's not a technical problem, it's a user-need issue.

By: Mouse

Mouse — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:22:26 +0000

I liked the Applets video. Concept is there, but man do I have some questions as to its use as a replacement for the numerous Excel projects out there. If it were ever to get to OpenSource, I would be test driving it.

By: sachxn

sachxn — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:01:07 +0000

yes the easiest things work for longer times….

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:27:06 +0000

The person who claims this post is drivel because it claims that Excel is a database obviously can't read very well. (as pointed out by others) Also, using the strictest definition of a database, Notepad's txt format qualifies as a Db. (Stop the venum now, I am in no way claiming notepad is a good DB solution. I am just saying it meets the minimum requirements to be called a DB.) At one point, I didn't have access to a “real” DB, so I built a DB using SAS.

Excel came in real handy with my web interfaces to flat reports and cusomizing calculations in the Excel spreadsheet. I'd be really hardpressed to do some of the things that were so easy that way using standard “DB” tools. I'm part of IT and I certainly can relate to problems working with IT people where more than 30 minutes worth of work are involved. I've wrtten specs that totally laid out the data design and 5 iterations and months later, the people responsible for providing the interface were still screwing it up.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:25:50 +0000

Hey this Ragic looks really promising. Hope they'll make a difference.

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:30:56 +0000

dfdfdf

By: Rick - a Merican

Rick - a Merican — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:25:11 +0000

There may be no solution...it has been this way for a very long time...
http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo/archive/200...
and can be expected to continue.

By: Chris Clark

Chris Clark — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:36:01 +0000

I think most of these issues are problems with users and processes, not Excel. IMO, a well-designed and thought out spreadsheet should be considered as a viable alternative to development in a lot of cases.

By: Kuo Chia-fu

Kuo Chia-fu — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:14:38 +0000

http://www.ragic.com
I think they're doing exactly what you're talking about.

By: andybak

andybak — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:57:19 +0000

You didn't read the article very closely, did you? You've missed the central point which is that people who might need a relational database (I assume that's what you mean by a database) use Excel instead because the alternatives are too difficult.

By: Hang

Hang — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:03:13 +0000

This article missed the most important point which is that Excel gives you a UI for free. I know a technologically savvy friend who deliberately chose to use Google Spreadsheets over MySQL for his startup for precisely this reason. Google Spreadsheets sucks as a database but it's great as a data manipulation tool. Same applies for Excel

By: Jakewk

Jakewk — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 01:05:33 +0000

He's not saying Excel is a database, he's saying it's USED as a database. There is a difference.

By: Jakewk

Jakewk — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 01:04:09 +0000

Yeah, this was DabbleDB, which is now a take-under by Twitter, which means they'll likely shelve the product and use the talent on the team. Not an auspicious indicator for the robustness of the opportunity. However, it may be a function of web-oriented startup founders trying to address what is actually an Old IT problem. This may require a different culture than your typical Web2.0 startup.

By: Jason L. Baptiste

Jason L. Baptiste — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:41:15 +0000

Hey Paul,

Thanks for the comment! It's fairly nuts, but it just works for your
average user. It's almost as if MSFT created the simplest product for what
needed to be done, BUT it's not the right tool.

I think people understand the sheets concept well. If you made it easy to
start interlinking things ala cells on different sheets, it might work.

By: Paul Rosania

Paul Rosania — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:33:08 +0000

Wow. I certainly agree that Excel is a business process smell, in a lot of its use cases. In my few years as a consultant I saw it used for just about everything — CRM, document management, etc. However, I think one of the reasons it's been so successful in that role is because of how simple it is: just a stack of 2-dimensional sheets. MS Access can be used to build the types of apps that Excel is used awkwardly for, but most people can't grok the relational mindset. I wonder if there is a way to overcome this “flat” thinking that makes Excel so easy to understand for the average user.

By: Jason L. Baptiste

Jason L. Baptiste — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:57:39 +0000

I'm not referring to using excel as an actual database for an
application, but the fact that it is used by people all of the time to
store information that should be in a db driven app. Whomever wrote
this comment obviously doesn't understand how most of the world is
working

-jlb
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By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:54:33 +0000

Excel isn't a database. The entire posting is ridiculous. Whomever wrote this obviously doesn't understand basic data structures. This drivel has no place among the venerable halls of internet discourse.

By: maacl

maacl — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:42:49 +0000

Wasn't this what DabbleDB was?

By: Jason L. Baptiste

Jason L. Baptiste — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:34:57 +0000

What about novice computer users?