Hi all,
Mathias Röllig wrote:
Hello!
Am 12.12.2007 20:59 schrieb Leonard Mada:
1.) I do not have a strong opinion on this. Somehow, I find
autofiltering very limited and useful only in very simple situations,
not on really big tables. (See my issue
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=66588 for a better
solution. Thats why I basically have switched to MS Visual FoxPro for
such situations - not an ideal solution.)
Calc isn't and shouldn't be a RDBMS. So you have find out by yourself
that a database is the better solution for you.
While Calc is not an RDBMS, it offers some great advantages over a full
DB-solution.
1.) a DB needs special software
(I haven't tried Base yet, but this is not the sole point)
2.) a DB needs skilled users that know to work with a DB
- create the DB
- use the data inside the DB
- this is much more complex than a simple SELECT statement
3.) to create a DB one needs to know beforehand how the data is organised
Conversely
- a spreadsheet is cheap, no special software
- can be easily created
- in NO time (INSTANTLY)
- most users know to work with the spreadsheet
(and could easily learn an additional SELECT statement)
- data can be edited easily within the spreadsheet
- the data does not need to be structured
(especially in the beginning, when the user doesn't yet know
how the DB structure should look like)
There are so many good reasons to use a spreadsheet, and indeed, I can
confirm that spreadsheets are still the most used mediums. In the
institution I work (5000 - 10000 employees), spreadsheets are still the
backbone. But many tasks are indeed replaced with custom DB-solutions.
We are also implementing a custom solution (cost 2 Million $, and NO, it
is not MS). It is a great loss for the spreadsheet market, but it was
somehow foreshadowed, because non of the developers showed any interest
in improving the spreadsheet concept over the last 30 years. [There were
some brilliant ideas back in the early 90s, but non of the big vendors
persuaded this path. I have already witnessed numerous other
organisations migrating to custom solutions, that I now believe that the
damage to the spreadsheet market is final.]
Extending the spreadsheet concept with some SQL-commands would only make
them better and more usable.
So you can switch from FoxPro to Base. I don't know if Base supports
FoxPro but any other type of database.
I do not want to switch. I can use Excel to edit the spreadsheet and
import the spreadsheet in VisualFoxPro to perform some advanced
searches. BUT, this is still an additional step. Why not have both steps
inside Calc?
...
2.) A big problem for autofilter are big tables, like with 50,000 rows.
The user might have 10,000 entries and it becomes very impractical to
search a value in the autofilter within this big list of entries. Some
brainstorming is needed to solve this one (I am aggressively pointing to
my previous issue).
In my opinion your issue and autofilter are two different things.
...
To make my point of view clear:
Think about if there also no "Lehmann" in "Hamburg" ...
Far more often (at least in real business), one does not have to cope
with "NO 'Lehmann' in 'Hamburg'", but rather with 'Lehmann' is one entry
between other 10,000 distinct entries. Searching the right entry in the
filter drop-down list is really cumbersome. That's my point. And I have
no idea how to solve this issue. SQL-statements would make it so much
easier.
Sincerely,
Leonard
This is a problem that many users have with Excel. And there is no way
to reset *all* autofilter columns at once, or is there any (except to
delete the autofilter)? There are many users which will not find any
"Hempel" in "Dresden" if they got the sheet with active autofilter from
anyone.
Greetings
Mathias
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