jonathon wrote:
On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 15:30, Andreas Saeger wrote:
I have never seen any reasonable argument why spreadsheets should be used like
this (except for mere laziness).
The typical user neither knows, nor cares what the difference between
a database and a spreadsheet program is.
That they want is a _simple_ way to enter data, and then retrieve it,
when needed.
But this is exactly where the typical user fails while using a
spreadsheet. The forums and lists are full of issues with "strange input
problems" (fully comprehensible and expected by experienced users),
- Apostroph in front of numbers (which are no numbers at all).
-People destroy lists with a simple sort operation (click column and
sort button).
-People calculate and sort mixed numbers and text (both with centered
orientation to get rid of the "strange auto-indendation")
- In sheet databases people use [V/H]LOOKUP in default mode (ordered
scales) and get false positive matches all the time without even
noticing the errors.
- People do not get the idea that 90% of all spreadsheet functionality
is about calculating numbers. They consequently use the very limited
text features. And if they are lucky they notice that things go wrong.
Do you really understand all the consequences of the text related
options in different contexts? Calc is very, very broken in this
respect. IMHO, Gnumeric is the only spreadsheet which handle text properly.
I debugged hundreds of sheets with all kinds of errors due to _simple
but wrong_ usage.
That data can be as simple as a list of dvds, or as sophisticated as
the human genome project.
It is so much easier to keep simple lists in databases. My oldest file
is a list of private expenses. Used to be an Excel sheet. Since 2003 it
is a flat dBase list with ~50,000 rows and a spreadsheet filled with
data pilots and charts bound to virtual tables. No no values, no
formulas, no macros only automatically resizing import ranges. I'm
shure, the dBase file works with more than 100,000 rows as reliable and
quick as it does today. I never open the database. I enter new data
directly into the beamer. A date, 6 categories A-F, price and optional
remark. No missing values, no invalid numbers, extremely simple
aggregations by data pilot.
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