Joe wrote:
It probably doesn't matter much today with faster processors and more
memory, but a change like that would also involve making everything
bigger - both programs and data files. And, because it was bigger, it
would involve more disk access and processing time to handle. So, aside
from the programming difficulties, there would be a performance hit for
a benefit most users don't need. (I've seen a lot of posts here about
OOo being or starting up too slow now!)
Not being a big spreadsheet user, I can't imagine having a spreadsheet
that's anywhere near as big as the current limits. It seems that it
would be extremely unwieldy and very easy to get lost in and make
unintentional changes that would be extremely difficult to locate and
repair. I don't think anybody would need to write a spreadsheet program
anywhere near that big that wouldn't be better split into separate
sheets or programs, so the rest must be data rows.
As has been said here many times before, if you've got that much data,
the only effective way to deal with it is through the use of external
files using things like databases.
If all you have (know) is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
(spreadsheet).
Joe
It depends. I had the exact opposite situation a while back. I'm
reasonably proficient with a spreadsheet, but not so much with databases.
So I had a situation where I needed to massage some data that I had
procured as text files. Do some statistics and draw some graphs, that
sort of thing. It turned out to be over 62000 data sets. But DataPilot
was the perfect tool to do what I needed.
I probably _could_ have worked it out by creating a database, but it
would have taken me a whole lot longer because I would have spent
considerable time just screwing around figuring out how to do it.
Now if it had been 72K instead of 62K rows I would have had no choice.
You can create dictionary definitions of "spreadsheet" and "database
app" that make them into completely different animals, but in real life
applications there is a considerable overlap.
--
Rod
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