4 ms·

Actually you run into the one of Excel's biggest problems when you do this, namely "Multiple versions of the truth". Here's how that happens: The central databa

Actually you run into the one of Excel's biggest problems when you do this, namely "Multiple versions of the truth". Here's how that happens: The central database often contains bad data. Users "fix" the bad data in their spreadsheet. Excel doesn't have the ability to write the updated data back to the database. Now everyone has their own versions of "the truth". There are products that attempt to solve this problem by adding the ability to write modified data back to the database. See for example Pebble Reports, http://pebblereports.com/features/ http://pebblereports.com/features/ but this is a reporting program and does not have spreadsheet capabilities.

52-6F-62 9y ago
My first question was going to follow the poster above, and you answered it for me. I didn't realize Excel couldn't write back to the database. It shouldn't be too hard to develop an extension for that purpose, would it? Aside from that — what about MS cloud services? I mean, maybe that's not appropriate for healthcare or certain businesses, but for others it allows there to be a single source of truth if the workflow is correctly tuned, no? I can produce a doc in my local instace, push to 365, edit remotely on the web, have somebody else edit remotely, and sync it back to my local instance without a hitch. I use Office365 for that purpose regularly at my job. I'm a developer, but I have regular communication with editors, producers, project managers, division managers, operations managers, art directors, and so on. A lot of the information we share is tabled and needs to stay updated, and editable by each party involved. It's worked well for me in that regard. Maybe others have had different experiences?
- jerf 9y ago
  "I didn't realize Excel couldn't write back to the database. It shouldn't be too hard to develop an extension for that purpose, would it?" Well, more accurately, it can write back to the database, but normal usage of Excel won't afford that result. Normal usage of Excel you have an independent value. It is also a dubious proposition as to whether we want people to actually write back to the central database; you'd be one stray macro away from disaster. You sorta want it if someone manually corrects something, but not if they operate on it programmatically, and now we're making things really complicated.
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    Thanks for the insight.
  - allenz 9y ago
    There shouldn't be any risk if you have version control.
cr0sh 9y ago
> There are products that attempt to solve this problem by adding the ability to write modified data back to the database. Another company/product that I know about (though it's been over a decade since I last touched it) that attempted to fix this issue was Actuate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuate_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuate_Corporation Hmm - and now that I've started digging into it, I see that this company has radically changed from what I knew of it. I had known it as a company which created software for designing and running reports from various data sources (whatever could feed it, honestly - excel, odbc, csv files, etc), which internally could be configured for more advanced usage using a language that had similarities to Visual Basic (it was OO long before VB, and geared for the reporting system, not general purpose usage). Before I left my employer who used it, they had just announced a Java-based system of "business objects" and some kind of tool to interact with data in an Excel-like manner (the tool essentially had all of the functionality of Excel at the time - including pivot tables), where changes would propagate thru the system. Plus interaction could only be done thru those objects, which were defined as "views" into the dataset. So - after research this (just now!) - imagine my surprise at finding that this company now is named: https://www.opentext.com/ https://www.opentext.com/ ...and they also did something called "BIRT" - which was open source and part of Eclipse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIRT_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIRT_Project Apparently this started in 2004 (not long after I left my employer - and that it is Java-based also fits). I'm not sure what is what with the company any longer? If I had to guess (probably wrongly), they spun off their Actuate reporting stuff and the other tools as open source (?), and are now concentrating on other things, possibly in the same vein? Weird. But very interesting.

52-6F-62 9y ago

My first question was going to follow the poster above, and you answered it for me. I didn't realize Excel couldn't write back to the database. It shouldn't be too hard to develop an extension for that purpose, would it? Aside from that — what about MS cloud services? I mean, maybe that's not appropriate for healthcare or certain businesses, but for others it allows there to be a single source of truth if the workflow is correctly tuned, no? I can produce a doc in my local instace, push to 365, edit remotely on the web, have somebody else edit remotely, and sync it back to my local instance without a hitch. I use Office365 for that purpose regularly at my job. I'm a developer, but I have regular communication with editors, producers, project managers, division managers, operations managers, art directors, and so on. A lot of the information we share is tabled and needs to stay updated, and editable by each party involved. It's worked well for me in that regard. Maybe others have had different experiences?

jerf 9y ago
"I didn't realize Excel couldn't write back to the database. It shouldn't be too hard to develop an extension for that purpose, would it?" Well, more accurately, it can write back to the database, but normal usage of Excel won't afford that result. Normal usage of Excel you have an independent value. It is also a dubious proposition as to whether we want people to actually write back to the central database; you'd be one stray macro away from disaster. You sorta want it if someone manually corrects something, but not if they operate on it programmatically, and now we're making things really complicated.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  Thanks for the insight.
- allenz 9y ago
  There shouldn't be any risk if you have version control.

cr0sh 9y ago

> There are products that attempt to solve this problem by adding the ability to write modified data back to the database. Another company/product that I know about (though it's been over a decade since I last touched it) that attempted to fix this issue was Actuate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuate_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuate_Corporation Hmm - and now that I've started digging into it, I see that this company has radically changed from what I knew of it. I had known it as a company which created software for designing and running reports from various data sources (whatever could feed it, honestly - excel, odbc, csv files, etc), which internally could be configured for more advanced usage using a language that had similarities to Visual Basic (it was OO long before VB, and geared for the reporting system, not general purpose usage). Before I left my employer who used it, they had just announced a Java-based system of "business objects" and some kind of tool to interact with data in an Excel-like manner (the tool essentially had all of the functionality of Excel at the time - including pivot tables), where changes would propagate thru the system. Plus interaction could only be done thru those objects, which were defined as "views" into the dataset. So - after research this (just now!) - imagine my surprise at finding that this company now is named: https://www.opentext.com/ https://www.opentext.com/ ...and they also did something called "BIRT" - which was open source and part of Eclipse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIRT_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIRT_Project Apparently this started in 2004 (not long after I left my employer - and that it is Java-based also fits). I'm not sure what is what with the company any longer? If I had to guess (probably wrongly), they spun off their Actuate reporting stuff and the other tools as open source (?), and are now concentrating on other things, possibly in the same vein? Weird. But very interesting.