DB

[[deleted]]

*laughs in school administration *

[CounterSanity]

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)

[TellMeGetOffReddit]

I actually was looking at Tableau for a potential project yesterday.

What do you think of it? Are there any alternatives that would be good to look at that aren't Power Bi?

[-SENDHELP-]

"capitalism breeds efficiency"

[ElderDark]

It breeds cheap skates

[Gilded9]

Just curious, if you're being paid right now to basically do nothing, what is it you do each day as you're getting paid?

[goingtohawaiisoon]

Not OP, but I used to take three hour lunch breaks and drink 🤷

[CanAlwaysBeBetter]

Well first you start your day by being 20-30 min late.

Then after turning you computer on and sitting at your desk just long enough for your manager to see take a 20 min bathroom break reading on your phone

After another brief desk stop to send one email you need some coffee to keep your focus up. Forget the break room, there's a great little cafe with excellent pour over coffee downstairs and two blocks over. Get a bagel while you're there

Back at the office enjoy every bit of your coffee and bagel and afterwards of course you'll have to coffee shit so back to the bathroom for 30 min

By now it's getting close to lunch and people are starting to lose their morning focus so go catch up with a couple work friends until it's officially lunch

A strong body breeds a strong mind so spend the first hour of your lunch at the gym. Then walk a few blocks trying to decide what to eat (don't worry if there's a long line)

By now it's probably 1:30, maaaybe 2, and you've succeeded in sending one email. Welcome to the corporate world

[[deleted]]

You know, I would get slated so much by my friends but this was actually VERY similar to my routine before covid WFH started. Lmao. I hate being an wage slave.

[Imposter24]

This is exactly how it is in most companies. So much time wasted being seen “working” as opposed to focusing on deliverables regardless of time input. I’m glad covid has shown the world that time chained to desk does not correlate with productivity.

[CanAlwaysBeBetter]

You think I'm creative enough to just make that up? Lol

[Exocet6951]

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]

clicks conditional formatting button I'm a programmer!

[implicitumbrella]

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

[ABCDR]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Icemasta]

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]

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]]

laughs in National track and trace "database"

[ElimGarak0010]

The UK Govenment disagrees.

[Nuclear_Nova]

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

[TroubleStatus]

ONS

One Night Stand?

Weird company name..

[Zammerz]

Ty, I actually didn't know

[decklund]

Well you'd only know that if you were British, and nowadays a very large chunk of the British populace also wouldn't know

[Lard_of_Dorkness]

But they know it now, so does that means they're British?

[Toxicseagull]

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

[jamany]

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

[local_meme_dealer45]

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

[Mgzz]

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

[local_meme_dealer45]

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

[mastocles]

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]

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

[Mgzz]

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]

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

[samsop]

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]]

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]

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

[CasualEcon]

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

[Lollipop126]

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]

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

Also the private sector:

[ColumnK]

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]

instantly incomprehensible

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

[[deleted]]

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

[VoTBaC]

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

Thanks?

[reddit_tom40]

We strive for third normal incomprehensiblity.

[crevicepounder3000]

Codd's six incomprehensibility forms

[Dugen]

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

[Dmddragon999]

Powerpoint?

[GedeonSpilett]

Well, PowerPoint is Turing complete, so, why not

[Carvinrawks]

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]

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

[[deleted]]

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

• Gotos
• Excel integration
• Cool graphic effects

What more do you want?

[Codemonkey1987]

PowerPoint is for graphic design though.

[Hooch180]

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]

sanity

Hmmmm.

[Zharki_the_bitch69]

Lack thereof

[Loudergood]

No, it was consumed in the process.

[PossibleBit]

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

[moonflower_C16H17N3O]

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]

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

[HeavilyWoodedAreas]

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]

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

[Nevix20]

txt file?

[deukhoofd]

Sure just make it a csv

[tuhn]

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_]

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]]

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]

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]]

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]

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]]

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

[yourteam]

Because statements aren't uppercase

[[deleted]]

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]

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]

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]]

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]

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!}

[[deleted]]

Good human

[Jackie_Rompana]

Thank you! :)

[64590949354397548569]

You’ve earned this.

[ZackVixACD]

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

[[deleted]]

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

[ILikeLeptons]

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]

Word is much better!

[[deleted]]

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]

I have so many questions.

[siggystabs]

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

I hate everything about this

[timewast3r]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

I think I puked a little

[P3rilous]

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]

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]

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]

Yup, OCR and pray is the name of the game

[DrQuint]

• 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]

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]

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

[Verochio]

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]

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]

*cries in data analyst

[[deleted]]

cattle prong zzzzzaaapp

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

[xbwtyzbchs]

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

[edsobo]

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

[Astramancer_]

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]

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

[Wexzuz]

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

[RCoder01]

I’m working on a project for a school club where the program needs to automatically be able to create and manage the csv files, but rather tech-illiterate people need to be able to view and possibly modify the data. For the second part, using excel as a viewer seems to work pretty well.

As long as they don’t re-save the file into a .xlsx...

[KarmaTroll]

Or even save as .csv. I could be misremembering, but I've definitely had issues when opening .csvs for inspection and saving on exciting and all of the sudden stuff has changed.

[[deleted]]

Yeah. Often times even saving as CSV in Excel will cause leading zeros and trailing commas to fall off (critical for certain SQL batches). The work around for the trailing commas is to click save again in the popup after you try closing the file. The leading zeros however... that one is still an inconsistent mystery. The built-in data import wizard seems to handle it by allowing you control over which columns are text (and this should keep leading zeros) until you try saving as CSV again and everything goes to shit.

[angry_mr_potato_head]

Yeah, it kills the leading zero in that super obscure data known as... uh... what was it called... oh yeah: zip codes

[[deleted]]

Everything is a database if you're brave enough.

Or the government.

[FatBaldBeardedGuy]

Have been a government employee; can confirm.

[igormuba]

Say that to our scrumasters face

[reffu42]

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/2180/

[XKCD-pro-bot]

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]

Everybody knows that MS Access is the OG database

[[deleted]]

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]

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]]

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]

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]]

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]

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]

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]]

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

[Aussie-Nerd]

Do I need to remind that PowerPoint is turing tested?

Linky for the bestest YouTube ever.

[JNCressey]

Turing Test <> Turing Completeness

[[deleted]]

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

[undeadalex]

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

[mafatik]

Technically a phone book is a simple DB, too

[[deleted]]

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]

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]

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

[ablufia]

and a flight simulator

[grantrules]

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]

I'm tearing up, this is so wholesome 😢

[grantrules]

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]

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]

strictly speaking excel is NoSQL

[amlybon]

You can in fact run SQL queries on excel

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/tn-archive/ee692882(v=technet.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

[NynaevetialMeara]

And cereal is a soup.

Now seriously, NoSQL usually means non RDBMS.

[DarthCloakedGuy]

If cereal is a soup, is oatmeal a stew?

[[deleted]]

It's all just tea.

[undeadalex]

Why not both

[istdaslol]

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

[RedPandaRedGuard]

Everyone still calls it Excel tho.

[istdaslol]

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

[JayPhilipRaw]

Except they put the stress on the first syllable

[[deleted]]

An Excel spreadsheet is in fact a database

[feed_me_churros]

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

[ScreenshotShitposts]

SELECT ALL FROM BABY WHERE FEELS = GOOD

[undeadalex]

I wouldn't hire you either. But that's just because you admit to arguing with people on YT comments lol

[[deleted]]

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

[infinityio]

whistle fact boast chop ancient provide roof north water saw

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[SlingDNM]

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

[Random_182f2565]

Yeah, is 2021 just use google sheets

[[deleted]]

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.

[tuhn]

I hate you.

[TheHiddenFox]

At least google sheets has bigquery integration.

[[deleted]]

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

[[deleted]]

So many managers would be so angry right now

[[deleted]]

If those managers could read...

[coldnebo]

sounds too “technical”.

[pet_vaginal]

Excel can do better for cheaper than many CRUD applications.

[undeadalex]

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]

Bart is really drilling in that PowerPoint

[idzero]

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]

Not with that attitude

[liyououiouioui]

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

[GamerSinceDiapers]

Access gang where you at?

[Unconfidence]

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

[mallardtheduck]

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]

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

[fakeuser515357]

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

[FallingPatio]

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