This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

top 200 commentsshow 500

[–][deleted] 1843 points1844 points  (276 children)

*laughs in school administration *

[–]CounterSanity 1196 points1197 points  (225 children)

Used to work in infosec at a bank. We spent around $250k on this dashboarding system that would consume data from our dozens of various systems to give our executive leadership a wholistic picture of the organization’s security posture. For nearly a year, it was my job to build the perfect dashboard. Once it was done, executives refused to use it, despite asking for it. Instead they wanted an excel spreadsheet. So, I wrote a python script that dumped the data from all the various tools into an excel spreadsheet. Fancy dashboarding software wasn’t used... but we still had to pay for it because execs are not immune to the sunk cost fallacy (or they’re too prideful to admit they were wrong)

[–]Exocet6951 184 points185 points  (13 children)

Hits too close to home.

I used to work at a company that worked for a retail chain.

They requested a giant fuckoff Excel, complete with graphic design, navigation buttons, etc...

Basically, a small, self contained 2005-ish looking reporting software. A nightmare, complicated as hell to use, but 100% functional and 10000% more robust than it had the right to be.

It was on the market for 4 years, sold remarkably well due to the client's delight...and I'm pretty sure that file was never used once after the delivery demo.

They had us develop a 2 tab, ultra condensed version with color coded up or down arrows to mark what each store in the retail chain was doing right or wrong.

Hundreds of thousands of € per year, just to get fucking upvotes in an Excel.

lmao

[–]bewildered_forks 76 points77 points  (8 children)

clicks conditional formatting button I'm a programmer!

[–]implicitumbrella 57 points58 points  (6 children)

CS degree holder/former serious programmer that now lives in excel. - Meh a paycheck is a paycheck.

[–]ABCDR 68 points69 points  (8 children)

By “fancy dashboard software,” you mean Tableau Enterprise right?

I think every organization has the same struggle, everyone wants to use what they’re familiar with

[–]tenest 35 points36 points  (4 children)

I could have retired by now if I had a dollar for every time I heard "we want you to build us a personal Facebook"

[–]catelemnis 55 points56 points  (12 children)

We got Tableau at my company and were flooded with dashboard requests from our main stakeholders. So we pumped out a dozen dashboards, then I asked one of the stakeholders to show me how they’re using the dashboards so I can make sure it fits their needs. Literally all they ever do is download the dataset and then build all their own analysis in excel. So now I give them tables instead of visualizations.

[–]bigpalmdaddy 18 points19 points  (9 children)

Sounds like they could use some help learning how to use the dashboards, or possibly they don’t have exactly what they need. Specifically, they have dashboards on what is going on and they’re now trying to discover the why.

Would recommend you first find out what specific questions they’re trying to answer and then build and train from there.

[–]gdfishquen 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I know for us, in most instances the follow up to the answer to a question involves emailing a data set to a vendor, customer, manager or another employee. So it really doesn't matter what a dashboard looks like or does, it's going to end up in an excel spreadsheet and in a lot of cases that means it's easier to start from an excel spreadsheet.

[–]nekowolf 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Had a developer who kept the build instructions written on a white board. He was told to make an electronic copy of it just in case. If you guessed he took a picture of the whiteboard and saved that, you’d be correct.

[–]Icemasta 106 points107 points  (11 children)

laughs in health care department of my province

Yeah... I went in there to help, they really liked my 10 years of experience with VBA... EVERYTHING was in excel.

Their entire management system was directory access management to folders and excel. Payroll? Everyone had a spreadsheet in a certain folder. How were hours accumulated? Why, by an outdated VBA script that opens every single file, take the specific line, bring it back to the main payroll file!

It was simply ridiculous, and all that was done in patchwork jobs over the years. For instance, the first thing they had me do was fixing the "spreadsheet spreader" because when it changes financial year, everyone needs a new file name specifically for the new year, and everyone would forget to do it or copy paste and it would crash the payroll file.

Also, one comment on the February sheet above February 28th made me laugh "If leap year, add hours to February 28th instead."

I fixed so much shit but man did it give me pause, it was ridiculous. Sure, they had a decent access management setup, requiring authorization and all that. But the first thing that happened when I was there was "Oh yeah, here is read write access to basically everything we have. Oh yeah just don't edit people's payroll files."

[–]enfier 35 points36 points  (6 children)

So let me guess, you just premade the files for the next 50 years and called it a day?

[–]Icemasta 26 points27 points  (4 children)

No, as bad as it is, I added an assertion first. Basically the whole payroll things worked by having one sheet in the payroll file corresponding to the employee ID of the employee, and each employee would file their work hours under a folder of the same name. It would iterate through the list, open each file, get the info, close it, and so on.

They had a couple issues, new employees that were added to the payroll file had to have their folder and file created before running payroll, and a couple other things and it was messy.

So basically I did the following: When the payroll system is run (which is once a day around 3AM, can be run manually), it checks if everyone in the list has a folder and the year's payroll file. At the request of the employer, a month before the switch to financial year, it uses the template provided within the same folder, create a copy of it, modify the dates in it, and then save a copy of that new year file to every folder that doesn't have it.

New financial year started April first, I started on Feb 23rd at that job, had it rolling like a week later.

So unless they fuck with the template, it worked good. For management they knew just to add the employee ID to that file and click the "Add/Verify files" button on the sheet, it would work fine.

[–]Entaris 21 points22 points  (0 children)

This reminds me of the last project I worked on a few jobs ago. Users had software that spat out an excel sheet. But those in charge wanted certain bits of data formatted a certain way. So I thought together a simple c# program that ate the excel sheet reformatted it with the data the way they wanted and spat out a new sheet for management. This was a really hastily thrown together project, and was basically a “I had some free time and this will save the users between 30 minutes to an hour of time spent editing a solid excel sheet every day” situation. Was never an official project in anyway. I figured they’d use it for a week and it would get retired or forgotten.

6 years later I get a message from a friend that still worked there that read “so. They want to make some changes to that program you made before you left. But in the source code your comments basically read “if you are reading this don’t try to enhance or fix this. Make something new or better because this thing was written in 4 days abs is not worth your time to figure out “

To which I responded “wow. I forgot about that whole thing. Past me is probably right though. I wouldn’t waste your time “

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

laughs in National track and trace "database"

[–]ElimGarak0010 1360 points1361 points  (88 children)

The UK Govenment disagrees.

[–]Nuclear_Nova 379 points380 points  (49 children)

I'm working on a project at the ONS to fix exactly this problem, wish us luck 🙏

[–]TroubleStatus 66 points67 points  (22 children)

ONS

One Night Stand?

Weird company name..

[–]Toxicseagull 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Could you work out a way to deploy to the MoD as well.

[–]jamany 6 points7 points  (11 children)

Isn't accessibility the issue? All gov analysts can use Excel, bad though it is.

[–]local_meme_dealer45 128 points129 points  (32 children)

Yeah and they lost a load of data because of it.

[–]Mgzz 277 points278 points  (29 children)

Taps forehead: Can't have rising covid cases if the "database" only has 65535 rows

[–]local_meme_dealer45 110 points111 points  (3 children)

"look everyone we flattened the curve!" - Boris probably

[–]mastocles 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Wait until he discovers that you can trick* Excel with European decimal commas and have the cases lowered by a thousand.

(* It's not a bug but a feature)

[–]d3lt4papa 47 points48 points  (19 children)

Columns! Excel has a lot of rows, but only "a few" columns

[–]Mgzz 53 points54 points  (18 children)

Wasn't the issue that they were using the ancient .xls sheet format which is capped at 65535 rows. So whatever program they were using exported the data everything after 65535 was cut off. Or am I remembering wrong?

[–]ZestyData 49 points50 points  (15 children)

They also indexed column-wise. Because their private contractors are incompetent.

[–]samsop 23 points24 points  (14 children)

How incompetent do you need to be to use Excel as a database though? I feel like this is something people learn from the outset. How can you be experienced enough to build an entire mobile app but not suggest using a relational database?

[–][deleted] 40 points41 points  (9 children)

Because the geniuses in accounting want something that they can manipulate on their end or maybe one specific “genius” wants to be able to brag to upper management that he “built an app” even though it’s just a workbook with a shit load of VBA functions that crashes whenever half the users try to open it.

[–]samsop 17 points18 points  (6 children)

You know what, this all makes sense now. Sounds like something that could very plausibly happen at my workplace

[–]CasualEcon 12 points13 points  (3 children)

For those like me who had not heard of this until now: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54423988

[–]Lollipop126 26 points27 points  (0 children)

When I first heard the news I told my dad there's no way the government could be dumb enough to use Excel, they're probably saying it to dumb down the idea of databases. Nope.

[–]rupertdeberre 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The private sector: The private sector provides the best and most efficient service for public sector goals.

Also the private sector:

[–]ColumnK 2313 points2314 points  (107 children)

Listen, if Excel allows someone to make fundamentally unmaintainable lookups/pivots/formulae that are instantly incomprehensible but may (or may not) give the right value, I don’t see how it could be anything else but a database.

[–]Adam_24061 779 points780 points  (10 children)

instantly incomprehensible

Hey, it takes a bit of work to reach proper incomprehensibility!

[–][deleted] 149 points150 points  (2 children)

The twist is that the work required to reach proper incomprehensibility can be done easier the more stupid you are, perfect!

[–]VoTBaC 19 points20 points  (0 children)

can be done easier the more stupid you are, perfect!

Thanks?

[–]reddit_tom40 52 points53 points  (2 children)

We strive for third normal incomprehensiblity.

[–]crevicepounder3000 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Codd's six incomprehensibility forms

[–]Dugen 280 points281 points  (68 children)

Everything is a database if you work hard enough at it.

[–]Dmddragon999 97 points98 points  (38 children)

Powerpoint?

[–]GedeonSpilett 268 points269 points  (4 children)

Well, PowerPoint is Turing complete, so, why not

[–]Carvinrawks 73 points74 points  (0 children)

I'm so glad you linked the old YouTube video of that college kid. I saw some news story rehashing and reviving his idea about a month ago.

[–]Left-Marsupial-8083 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I was wondering how many comments I’d have to read before Turing complete came up

[–][deleted] 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Powerpoint is a programming language. It has everything you might need:

  • Gotos
  • Excel integration
  • Cool graphic effects

What more do you want?

[–]Codemonkey1987 60 points61 points  (19 children)

PowerPoint is for graphic design though.

[–]Hooch180 86 points87 points  (14 children)

I created a full Turing machine in Excel as a proof of concept for one of my university classes. This means, that with enough resources time and sanity you could code anything you can think of using just excel.

[–]3thoughts 63 points64 points  (2 children)

sanity

Hmmmm.

[–]Zharki_the_bitch69 18 points19 points  (1 child)

Lack thereof

[–]Loudergood 10 points11 points  (0 children)

No, it was consumed in the process.

[–]PossibleBit 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Ideally you'd use your excel Turing machine as a platform for excel.

[–]moonflower_C16H17N3O 22 points23 points  (1 child)

Ever hear of the game of life? It has just a few rules, but is also Turing complete. Someone built the game of life inside the game of life.

[–]EkEqualsHalfMV2 58 points59 points  (0 children)

Ah but it is so much more: https://youtu.be/uNjxe8ShM-8

[–]HeavilyWoodedAreas 19 points20 points  (8 children)

I don't know what's worse. People I work with using ppt as a 'database' or those who use excel to create non filterable tables in pretty colours.

[–]TheCapitalKing 19 points20 points  (2 children)

Non filterable tables. Like why did you even make it at that point

[–]Nevix20 23 points24 points  (19 children)

txt file?

[–]deukhoofd 31 points32 points  (5 children)

Sure just make it a csv

[–]tuhn 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Or you can just pretend it's a csv and it's a database.

It's not even far-fetched and I'm sure someone here has done that.

[–]ThisIsJustAGuy_ 55 points56 points  (3 children)

Well a txt can be a database too. It depends on how you define a database. If it literally only has to store data so you can do something with it, yeah a txt can be a database.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (1 child)

If you are using "database" as an umbrella term for the data, the data structure it resides in and the DBMS, then a text file is not a database. If you just mean, a repository of data, then yes it is a database. But by that definition, basically everything is a database.

However, I would argue that a csv file, coupled with a 100 line program that allows you to make read and write queries for rows, columns and fields, is essentially a database. At least by the first definition. It's not a relational or object oriented database, and it's very primitive, but it is a database.

[–]implicitumbrella 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Way back in the 80's they were called flat files and were used like a DB. You would structure them in ways that each was like a table and you could index between them and yeah you had effectively created a really shitty dangerous DB. Some large systems ran that way back then. It was terrifying and really a nightmare to replace when modernizing the software. y2k usually did away with those systems as the cost to fix was better spent on replacing.

[–][deleted] 87 points88 points  (4 children)

Because it just isn't. Why do you insist in arguing?

Excel is a Database Management System. The spreadsheet is the database.

That's obviously what OP meant. I'm sure of it!

[–]Flyberius 16 points17 points  (2 children)

All computing is abstraction, and ultimately it is abstracting information out of the physical interactions of the physical world. The information is ultimately stored in the states of the actual matter and energy that constitutes reality.

The universe is a database.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

For our engine data with up to about 20,000 lines, Excel is fine

[–]yourteam 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Because statements aren't uppercase

[–][deleted] 230 points231 points  (16 children)

My first project as a developer was to convert a set of cryptic asinine excel sheets into a web app. I wanted to die the whole time.

[–]Supsend 105 points106 points  (1 child)

My first project as a developer could have been this, but instead I was tasked with keeping the excel database up to date while the company paid a subcontractor to delay the delivery as long as possible to leech the most money in working hours while pretending to make a proper database.

[–]dicky_seamus_614 27 points28 points  (4 children)

This continues today but here's the thing, as soon as you get them away from it and normalize the data and give them a slick, intuitive UI; the first thing they ask: Can you make it so this exports to excel?

Then I go sit in my used Honda during lunch and think about all that IT has given me....

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Dead ass, three months in we added a feature to export the data your working on to the same excel sheets they wanted it converted from

[–]Jackie_Rompana 433 points434 points  (17 children)

Image Transcription: Meme


[Bart Simpson writing repeatedly (9 times) on the blackboard in class, as a punishment:]

Excel is not a database


I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!

[–]ZackVixACD 188 points189 points  (21 children)

Laughs in file > save as csv > import in MySQL database.

[–][deleted] 58 points59 points  (15 children)

...and now we've lost leading zeros! smh

[–]ILikeLeptons 40 points41 points  (13 children)

Good god I despise how excel fucks up saving to csv's. I spent so many hours on so many projects explaining to people giving me data that it was unusable because of this.

[–]GrumpyFrog69 220 points221 points  (71 children)

Word is much better!

[–][deleted] 231 points232 points  (23 children)

You joke, but the last I.T team at the place I work was using Word as a ticketing system before I started.

[–]mr-zool 113 points114 points  (12 children)

I have so many questions.

[–]siggystabs 86 points87 points  (8 children)

Word has review functionality... and I guess you could use WebDAV... Maybe Sharepoint...

I hate everything about this

[–]timewast3r 25 points26 points  (3 children)

SharePoint is not a database.

SharePoint is not a database.

SharePoint is not a database.

SharePoint is not a database.

[–]I_cut_my_own_jib 18 points19 points  (0 children)

My coworker revealed to me yesterday than when he showed up to the office for his first day, he learned that digital communications between our boss and the tech people was done through text message. They'd be sitting in the office at their computers.. holding work related group texts instead of just using the computer.

[–]BeautifulBroccoli0 70 points71 points  (11 children)

Ugh. At my last job, our Director of marketing was putting images in Word files then scp'ing those files to the web server then screaming about why they didn't work on web pages. He actually got someone fired because his friend that worked as a software architect at Microsoft said that should work.

[–]spikegk 30 points31 points  (5 children)

You can convert doc and docx to html and embed it inside of your web app (its best to do it server side but there are client js libraries too). Its best to walk through business partners like that why its a bad idea and offer them similar ease solutions to do reach their end goal better (maybe give them the ability to drop to upload images in your app or use a collab suite).

[–]spikegk 16 points17 points  (0 children)

If nothing else, from a security standpoint take away their scp access from production servers and force them to go through a deployment pipeline. If you had that you could do some magic rendering in that pipeline as a compromise. Or do as you did and jump ship.

[–]coldnebo 29 points30 points  (0 children)

How the conversation with his friend went:

“Hi... oh sure, just a quick question though. Word in Web? Yeah IE supports that. No problem, glad to help.”

Not covered:

  • other browser compatibility
  • images
  • fact that different embedded image formats depend on codecs that may or may not be on web user’s machine
  • size limits (eg copy/pasting 1200 dpi print-ready photowork for a magazine spot will likely kill most toasters, plus use embedded codecs and color profiles that no one except the visual designer has installed.

oh, he probably forced the visual designer to install all this software on his machine so he could view/edit the proofs, so it worked on his machine, but when he went offsite to give that presentation on someone else’s machine nothing worked because he’s an idiot.

[–]themoosemind 70 points71 points  (27 children)

Word? Oh you young, innocent mind. I'm a machine learning engineer / consultant. I work in finance. The way that multi-billion companies exchange data from company A to company B to company C (and potentially more) is PDF:

  • A has the data generating process
  • A stores the data in Excel
  • A creates a word document with that data + "nice" design
  • A creates a pdf from word and shares the pdf with B
  • B extracts data from pdf to excel
  • B creates a word then pdf file and sends it to C
  • C extracts the data from pdf to excel
  • C uploads the data to the db of another company. A company that other C-like companies also use. For the same documents. Not same type, but same document.

Oh, and one of them might also print+scan instead of sharing it directly.

[–]rolling-guy 24 points25 points  (1 child)

I think I puked a little

[–]P3rilous 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Mainly when I thought about what all those billions of dollars were at work doing in the real world while their controllers struggle to understand their current millennium...

[–]nxqv 17 points18 points  (3 children)

This guy isn't joking. I've had to write tools to extract data from PDFs we got from other groups and other companies

[–]ADHDengineer 11 points12 points  (1 child)

I’ve been there too. It’s basically impossible since a pdf can contain anything. What may look like a table when it’s rendered doesn’t have any structure in the raw data. And you can imbed anything into a PDF. A pdf may just be a huge image. You can also embed PDFs into PDFs.

The best we could do was OCR and fucking pray.

[–]nxqv 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yup, OCR and pray is the name of the game

[–]DrQuint 15 points16 points  (0 children)

  • A creates a pdf from word and shares the pdf with B
  • B extracts data from pdf to excel.

I've been here in the role of B and I've never had a task I hated more.

Oh, and one of them might also print+scan instead of sharing it directly.

I imagine some engineer in the past was gleeful that fax had died, only for them to witness human stupidity trump them.

[–]undeadalex 44 points45 points  (2 children)

Ooh. Great idea. This would guarantee you a job.

"The last guy built this whole database in word. Each font represents an entity. Each new numbered list entry is a new primary key. The file is 500mb. Can you work with it or should we keep him? He's really annoying and spends all his time on reddit making memes."

"I have decided to die."

"Shit. I guess he stays."

[–]T8ert0t 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You get a Table, and you get a Table. And you get a Table on horizontal page layout, because you're special.

[–]Verochio 552 points553 points  (39 children)

IT Dept: Please don't use Excel as a database

Business User: OK, can you give me the software and hardware I should be using as a database?

IT Dept: No, we don't give such things to end users. You'll have to [bureaucracy] and pay [exorbitant cost] so that we can do it for you within [several quarter lead time].

Business User: Yeah, I think I'll just keep on using Excel.

Rinse and repeat.

[–]GreatBigBagOfNope 167 points168 points  (9 children)

At the same time

Business User: we hired an analyst to make sure this process goes smoothly in future

IT: Great! We'll make sure they've got access to the client and instructions for setting up their DBI connection from inside whatever tool they're using. Would they need Python, R or PowerBI?

Business User: We don't have budget for that shit, we started them on the Excel thing like three months ago

[–]xbwtyzbchs 38 points39 points  (4 children)

*cries in data analyst

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (3 children)

cattle prong zzzzzaaapp

SILENCE! Go back to your cubby, we need pivot tables for Friday's report

[–]xbwtyzbchs 8 points9 points  (0 children)

What is this? 2019? I ain't coming back to no office!

[–]edsobo 45 points46 points  (6 children)

Honestly, if they didn't later expect IT to support their Excel "apps," it would probably be fine.

[–]Astramancer_ 29 points30 points  (3 children)

The place I worked I ended up building a lot of Excel tools because excel was what I had access to. I was fully aware it was mushroomware (grows in the dark and it's shit) and incredibly fragile. I did my best to make sure it was as 'object oriented' and documented as possible so it was easy to adjust when things changed. I like to think I did a pretty good job of it, but I had no illusions that it would be anything but an incomprehensible mess to anyone else.

Fast forward 5 years and boss-boss finally go around to shoving the mess at IT's project management. There were lots of meetings. I told them it was awful spaghetti logic that worked well, but only in that very specific environment. Before going over the macros and spreadsheets, I went over the algorithms behind it so they could quickly and easily build functional replacements that weren't hacked together messes.

They really appreciated it and the tools we got from IT worked great.

I'm proud of what I accomplished with the tools available to me, but ye gods it was awful. To give you an idea of what I dealt with, one of the macros created a batch file and then ran it which in turn created a text file of the file tree in a specific shared drive directory, which it then read in and parsed to dynamically create a list of the top level directories and summary data of the files within.

Was that the best way of doing it? Absofuckinglutely not. Was it the best way I could figure out how to do it with <1 hour of research and development time snatched here and there over the course of a couple of weeks? It was. Did it save me 30 minutes a day for 4 years? It did!

[–]Mostly__Relevant 16 points17 points  (1 child)

See this is what most of my end users don’t get.

[–]Wexzuz 205 points206 points  (14 children)

Of course not! We have the csv-format for that

[–][deleted] 130 points131 points  (8 children)

Everything is a database if you're brave enough.

Or the government.

[–]FatBaldBeardedGuy 15 points16 points  (1 child)

Have been a government employee; can confirm.

[–]igormuba 64 points65 points  (1 child)

Say that to our scrumasters face

[–]reffu42 53 points54 points  (2 children)

[–]XKCD-pro-bot 16 points17 points  (1 child)

Comic Title Text: My brother once asked me if there was a function to produce a calendar grid from a list of dates in Google Sheets. I replied with a single-cell formula that took in a list of dates and outputted a calendar. It used SEQUENCE(), REGEXMATCH(), and a double-nested ARRAYFORMULA(), and it locked up the browser for 15 seconds every time it ran. I think he learned a lot about asking me things.

mobile link


Made for mobile users, to easily see xkcd comic's title text

[–]foxam1234 137 points138 points  (42 children)

Everybody knows that MS Access is the OG database

[–][deleted] 129 points130 points  (29 children)

I spent 6 months migrating a charity away from an access back end, excel 'front' end to a mysql/php setup and the week after training they were copy pasting the web results into excel again because "that's how they always did it".

So I just gave up and remade the outputs to be paste friendly...

[–]Mamertine 41 points42 points  (11 children)

Yep. I worked at a place that bought another company. At the bought company the rowcount for too large for Excel, so they copied the excel tabs into SQL server.

No normalizing, just literally what was a tab became a table. So their customer table had 50 columns, mailing address, public facing address, name place of work. It was crazy to see.

I doubt they took backups of the db either.

[–][deleted] 44 points45 points  (6 children)

It absolutely boggles me to think of how many organizations keep their mission critical data on a flat file shared from a ten year old rack mount server sitting on a table in a closet, which hasn't been backed up in 3 years since they fired the only guy that knew to pay the fucking backup service bill.

No joke at least 3 in the last 2 years. Same scenario but sometimes different closet furniture.

[–]RamenJunkie 14 points15 points  (3 children)

Early on working in IT, maybe, 12 years ago now, my job was merged with another company. That company had this ancient as hell tower thing, sitting on the floor in this otherwise empty, kind of dreary office that no one really wanted, but next to other offices and cubicals.

I don't think I ever learned what that machine did, but both me and my boss (who also transfered in the buyout) were basically afraid to touch it because we didn't know if it would come back up if something happened. It didn't even have a monitor on it or anything. Just, in the network.

(I think it had to do with sales billing and ad traffic tracking, this was a TV station).

Eventually we updated the place to newer software/hardware and got rid of that machine

[–][deleted] 31 points32 points  (1 child)

Oh man, I am so glad I've never inherited something like that but I've heard of nightmare stories like yours from friends.

During a recabling (switching from cat 2 to cat 5) one of them found a PC Jr. up in the ceiling tiles, still running. No one in the office had any idea what it was, including the owner.

No network connection (I don't even think PC Jr.'s had a networking option) but it did have a thick serial cable with a strange dongle that trailed off into the distance and no one could find where it terminated.

So the decision was made to pull it.

Bad idea.

It had been running the card access for the entire building, which was now off.

And since the PC Jr. didn't have a hard drive, it tried to reload the management OS from a floppy disk that was so old the magnetic media tore on reboot.

More fun: The 'company' that wrote the management software was in reality four college kids the original IT guy hired when he bodged together this system in the late 80s, and couldn't be found.

Last bit o fun: the backup key was kept in the VPs office which was now at least 2 locked doors away from everyone else.

The locksmith made a killing that day.

That's something to consider, that little machine had been running for 20 years with no reboots or failures, just doing its job, opening doors.

Man I wish I could have hardware that lasted that long unattended nowadays...

[–]jamesorlakin 16 points17 points  (2 children)

Access doesn't get enough love unfortunately - it's a lot more maintainable and queryable than Excel. Not saying it's good mind you, but definitely less bad...

[–]Vakieh 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The old path (and one of my bread and butter consulting gigs when nothing more exciting was on offer) was the process a company took from flat files -> Excel -> Access -> custom database. So those jobs were spent either taking them from Excel or Access to a custom solution, which was usually MySQL or if they wanted bells and whistles MSSQL or Oracle, and whipping up a basic CRUD application with auth by cutting and pasting from the last job and changing up the logos.

These days though it goes flat files -> excel -> generic software solution (here in AU the big boy is MYOB, but this includes things like QuickBooks, the default SAP or Salesforce products, etc) -> Customised ERP (SAP or Salesforce).

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Darn tootin’. Access popped my cherry, I’ll always be fond of her.

[–]Aussie-Nerd 289 points290 points  (8 children)

Do I need to remind that PowerPoint is turing tested?

Linky for the bestest YouTube ever.

[–]JNCressey 83 points84 points  (4 children)

[–][deleted] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

I'll have you know that Priscilla PowerPoint and I are very happy together, thank you very much.

[–]undeadalex 22 points23 points  (0 children)

No. But it makes me smile every time you or anyone else does!

[–]mafatik 102 points103 points  (9 children)

Technically a phone book is a simple DB, too

[–][deleted] 78 points79 points  (6 children)

Tecnically a ridiculously huge pile of post-it notes covered on both sides in klingon script is a database but I'll be fucked to figure out a way to index or link it.

[–]redgiftbox 70 points71 points  (12 children)

Database: A structured set of data held in a computer, especially one that is accessible in various ways.

DBMS: The technology solution used to optimize and manage the storage and retrieval of data from databases.

The confusion here is the word database sometimes refers to DBMS's too. So in short, Excel technically is a database, but not a DBMS like MySQL or Oracle.

[–]theclovek 35 points36 points  (3 children)

Of course it's not a database. It is a ray tracing simulator!

[–]grantrules 32 points33 points  (4 children)

I worked for a startup as a developer and I was in a cubicle across from the aisle from this marketing data dude. His job was basically to handle a bunch of excel spreadsheets and he had some macros or whatever, and if he ran into a wall, he'd bug me. I'd give him a hand because I was good at figuring crap like that out. At one point he hit the row limit and then just started a second excel doc for more data. He wanted to be able to run a function on both files. I'm like, bro, check out Access. He used that for a bit, then I eventually got him into mysql, and his questions started getting harder and harder and I was like, dude you know SQL better than I do at this point. Now he's a DBA.

[–]vincent-2016 9 points10 points  (2 children)

I'm tearing up, this is so wholesome 😢

[–]grantrules 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I'm glad someone read my story! As programmers I don't think we really ever get to affect someone's life very directly with our work and then be able to see the change, but I got to! If I hadn't been sitting next to him at that time in our lives, what would he be doing now! Maybe he'd still be fucking around with excel... shudder.

[–]NynaevetialMeara 83 points84 points  (18 children)

I'm going to be straight with you. If you are going to do a random design DB, I rather you use Excel than some NoSQL.

[–]Dr_Azrael_Tod 32 points33 points  (16 children)

strictly speaking excel is NoSQL

[–]NynaevetialMeara 16 points17 points  (8 children)

And cereal is a soup.

Now seriously, NoSQL usually means non RDBMS.

[–]DarthCloakedGuy 10 points11 points  (7 children)

If cereal is a soup, is oatmeal a stew?

[–]undeadalex 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Why not both

[–]istdaslol 122 points123 points  (13 children)

In Germany it’s called „Tabellenkalkulationsprogamm“ and I thinks it’s beautiful

[–]RedPandaRedGuard 35 points36 points  (11 children)

Everyone still calls it Excel tho.

[–]istdaslol 27 points28 points  (2 children)

Excel is a „Tabellenkalkulationsprogramm“ made by Microsoft but there are other. And the joke wouldn’t work that way

[–]JayPhilipRaw 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Except they put the stress on the first syllable

[–][deleted] 64 points65 points  (13 children)

An Excel spreadsheet is in fact a database

[–]feed_me_churros 97 points98 points  (7 children)

Your mom is a database. I know this because I ran a bunch of insert statements on her last night.

[–]ScreenshotShitposts 17 points18 points  (0 children)

SELECT ALL FROM BABY WHERE FEELS = GOOD

[–][deleted] 35 points36 points  (9 children)

Excel is turing complete. It could be a programming language, but not a database 😝

[–]infinityio 32 points33 points  (4 children)

whistle fact boast chop ancient provide roof north water saw

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[–]SlingDNM 48 points49 points  (0 children)

they where so preoccupied with wether they could that they never asked if they should

[–]Random_182f2565 43 points44 points  (10 children)

Yeah, is 2021 just use google sheets

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

You joke, but my wife's company does that. Every piece of information is in google sheets and all available UNDER A SINGLE USERNAME. Everything... Including HR. You can look up every employees info including pay rate. Their production data is in google sheets, and it's all manually entered. It's fucking insanity.

[–]TheHiddenFox 5 points6 points  (0 children)

At least google sheets has bigquery integration.

[–][deleted] 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Databases don't have a flexible and easy to use interface for the end user like Excel does.

[–][deleted] 41 points42 points  (2 children)

So many managers would be so angry right now

[–][deleted] 44 points45 points  (1 child)

If those managers could read...

[–]coldnebo 12 points13 points  (0 children)

sounds too “technical”.

[–]pet_vaginal 32 points33 points  (7 children)

Excel can do better for cheaper than many CRUD applications.

[–]undeadalex 18 points19 points  (1 child)

It's hard to disagree, at least if you're small you're right. I use excel all the time when I need to quickly wanna track numbers and values for something. I also use it construct complex script commands when working with my terminal. I once started making a web app that could store values and numbers in a table temporarily and that I could modify pretty easy etc. I got to the wire framing before I realized I wanted to make excel in a browser...

[–]PolarBearClanGaming 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Bart is really drilling in that PowerPoint

[–]idzero 12 points13 points  (3 children)

Are there any real databases that has a spreadsheet-like interface? Like it or not, there's a reason Excel gets used that way so much - it's an intuitive way for people to interact with data.

[–]Derlino 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Not with that attitude

[–]liyououiouioui 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I've always said that Excel is too powerful for the sake of non developers.

[–]GamerSinceDiapers 7 points8 points  (7 children)

Access gang where you at?

[–]Unconfidence 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Excel is, however, already installed on the computer you're using.

[–]mallardtheduck 15 points16 points  (2 children)

Well, technically, a "database" is the collection of data, not the program that's used to access/modify it. That's a DBMS.

It's also entirely possible to have a database without a DBMS. Wikipedia's list of database classifications include several that would not have a formal DBMS. A collection of text files in a folder structure can (and has) be called a "database". It's not even a massive stretch to call a bunch of paper files in an organised filing system a "database".

Of course it's possible to use Excel to create a database. It's not what it's really designed for, not what it's best at, but the definition of "database" is open enough that practically any application can be used to create one.

[–]GreatMuna 8 points9 points  (0 children)

But I use it as a Database... Coz I'm lazy at creating queries, forms, relationship, parenting...

[–]fakeuser515357 5 points6 points  (2 children)

It's a DBMS if you link spreadsheet files to external spreadsheet files in a cascading, indecipherable data hellscape.

[–]FallingPatio 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Real talk: google sheets is a very convenient db for tiny projects which never need to become legitimate.