9 ms·

People say "use a real database", fine, but where is the visual data entry? Where are the easy adhoc reports? Where are the forms? I guess if you're on Windows

by guelo 8y ago

People say "use a real database", fine, but where is the visual data entry? Where are the easy adhoc reports? Where are the forms? I guess if you're on Windows you can use Microsoft Access, but that's the only accesible tool I know of that doesn't require a team of programmers or an enterprise license for some Oracle/SAP type monstrosity.

Kagerjay 8y ago
Just use airtable, its like microsoft access but easier to use and pickup. Or just use google forms + google spreadsheets
- schwinn 8y ago
  Actually, I struggled making the transition to airtable from excel. Do you have recommendations for training? I do want to learn it, maybe no to a mastery level, but proficient
  - Kagerjay 8y ago
    I actually didn't find any specific "airtable" training, I just used the docs and forums. I had prior knowledge working with microsoft access and database design, so airtable was an easy transition. If I were to learn it without any prior experience, I would just look through every template they have. See which industries I'm most familiar with. And look at how those databases are organized. https://airtable.com/templates https://airtable.com/templates They have a really good 12 minute overview though, hitting every major concept though. https://vimeo.com/165624533 https://vimeo.com/165624533 I would also learn a little bit about relational database design. This 5 minute video is a good starting point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvrpuBAMddw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvrpuBAMddw I like using databaseanswers.org as a reference resource. This is a very nice 5 minute introduction to designing a database. http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/5_minute_tutorials/feeding_time_at_the_zoo.htm http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/5_minute_tutorial... Basically, if you come from an excel background, it would help if you knew a little bit about database design, and relational databases. Its not necessary, but Airtable is practically excel + microsoft-access. Start with a template, and play around with it. I would get familiar with this page in particular though. Formula and lookups are something you'll use often in any airtable base. https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/202576519-Guide-to-formula-lookup-count-and-rollup-fields https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/202576519-Gui.... This was perhaps the least obvious concept for me to pickup naturally. If you need any help though feel free to reach out to me I have contact information on my username
sin7 8y ago
I use PostgreSQL, which is a real database. I use DBeaver as the database manager. It allows me to enter data by typing it in. For reports, I query the data. It has autocomplete. No forms. For presentation, I toss the data on Excel. Bold the headers. Change the number type (pct, $, etc) to the correct one. I would say that it has made my life a lot easier. There is one repository where the data is held. If I mess up, I go back to the master tables. In Excel, I would usually start over. Joins are easy. Excel can do some things better. When it can, then I use it. It's not a one or the other. It's ok to use both.
- gerdesj 8y ago
  Me too but throw in MariaDB as well (I'm not exactly bi-lingual but can speak both with a dodgy accent and know some words better in one and some in the other.) I use Libre Office because Excel doesn't work very well on Arch Linux out of the box.
daveslash 8y ago
Obligatory Comment: "Excel as a Database" by Rory Blyth, circa early 2000's. "As a developer, you've probably, at some unfortunate point in your life (possibly several points, actually), been handed an Excel file that has been crammed full of 'data' by someone in marketing and told to 'do something with it.' " http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  As a developer, what should I do if I actually want to do that? Because I get a lot of satisfaction out of massaging messy wads of data into a clean, uniform, accessible form. Is there a job title or something I should look for?
  - snakeboy 8y ago
    "Data Scientist" should do the trick.
  - codazoda 8y ago
    The Analytics team at my company does this. ETL's we call them (Export, Transform, Load). Some of us are app devs and some are data analysts; there's cross-over. We do other things too, but moving data between systems is a big part of it. As for job titles; Software Engineer (or Developer) of Analytics, Data Analyst, Data Scientist, or something along those lines. Probably varies by company.
    - zer00eyz 8y ago
      I have a story that may amuse you. Recently I worked on a contract doing some data ingestion that the resident team didn't want to deal with. They had been provided a JSON api to get what should have been a batch file. The owner/api creator said "this is good enough we won't accommodate you." So much for sensible data transmission and batch processing. Because I have had to deal with these sorts of things before I have a fairly robust tool chain to hammer api's with requests to get the data in a reasonable time frame. In this case my client went full tilt - and simply hammered the API till its owner gave in and started sending batch files.
foobarrio 8y ago
This was my reaction to Flash. It's not a "real" programming environment is what everyone told me. Yea but it was a great authoring tool for non hard-core programmers. I helped a designer write a few simple puzzle games in Flash and it was overall a productive experience. Had I attempted to do that in html/JS I'm not sure it would have gone so smoothly. I haven't tried to write web games in the last 10 years so maybe there's some collection of html/JS tools that lets me develop in a similarly. I'm willing to bet though they're 10x harder to set up and require command-line knowledge (fine for me, not so much my designer friend).
- gowld 8y ago
  Has anything replaced Flash as a productive way to build animated games?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - mch82 8y ago
    Unity / Unreal (which can be quite accessible for projects that constrain themselves to built in features & asset store components)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Construct[0]. I used to sneer at such tools, considering them "not real gamedev". That was until, on one local edition of Global Game Jam, a designer in our team did in Construct in 15 minutes what took three of us coders a couple hours. This drove home the point that we were really overcomplicating things by coding a simple game from scratch (in XNA, back then). -- [0] - https://www.scirra.com/construct2 https://www.scirra.com/construct2 is the one I played with, but they also seem to have a web version now, for better or worse, which is available at https://www.scirra.com/ https://www.scirra.com/
- derefr 8y ago
dustingetz 8y ago
http://www.hyperfiddle.net http://www.hyperfiddle.net
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
I read a thing a few months back about some Western game developers collaborating with Japanese counterparts for the first time, and their biggest surprise was that a whole lot of game data is stored in an Excel file during development. If you want to change an enemy's stats or a physics parameter, you don't dig through config files with a text editor, you just pull up the spreadsheet. Reportedly it made a lot of tweak-test-repeat work much quicker.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  I don’t understand how editing a number in an excel file is any easier than editing a number in a text file. What was it that made the difference?
  - just_myles 8y ago
    I agree. Text file edit seems much quicker.
  - vbezhenar 8y ago
    Probably table representation. It's relatively hard to implement something similar using text format. You can have row for every unit in the game with columns corresponding to various characteristics. It looks very natural in Excel, but it would require quite a lot of formatting and errors with text file. Also Excel could have formulas which might be useful somewhere and supporting formulas in config file is another level of complexity and almost certainly it'll be worse than Excel.
    - Nullabillity 8y ago
      Then use a real database. You probably have a SQLite dependency anyway, so take advantage of it. Or don't, since SCMs are much better at diffing plain text than either. > Also Excel could have formulas which might be useful somewhere and supporting formulas in config file is another level of complexity and almost certainly it'll be worse than Excel. You'll have an easier time reimplementing Excel's formula system than basic arithmetic? I find that hard to believe.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
merb 8y ago
basically you can use excel to query postgresql. either with Power Query and NPGSQL or for the more non developer experience you can buy an addin: https://www.devart.com/excel-addins/postgresql.html https://www.devart.com/excel-addins/postgresql.html
Nullabillity 8y ago
> People say "use a real database", fine, but where is the visual data entry? Any visual DB client? > Where are the easy adhoc reports? Isn't that just queries? Then throw it into a view to "save". > Where are the forms? No idea what you're looking for here, but this sounds a lot like your first question.
- yawaramin 8y ago
  Ad-hoc reports are not just saved queries, they're saved queries + something like Word's mail merge feature so that you get a data-driven, print-quality document, like an invoice. Forms are data entry views that save to the backing tables. Nowadays the most well-known forms are probably https://docs.google.com/forms/ https://docs.google.com/forms/
ryanmonroe 8y ago
Not having a good data entry gui is the biggest benefit of not-excel in my experience. 90% of the time your data has a real source that's not "Jim's head" and you should find a way to impute the data from that source directly, avoiding the ever-present inaccuracies that come from human-imputed data.
- acct1771 8y ago
  Was the typo to drive home your point?
  - mclehman 8y ago
    My guess is that they meant this definition of impute, and are advocating for removing Jim's inferences entirely. Impute (finance): assign (a value) to something by inference from the value of the products or processes to which it contributes.
- paultopia 8y ago
  Also, even when you need human entered data, a spreadsheet is waaaaay too easy to make typos with, like putting things in the wrong row/column, overwriting previous entries, etc. Use a form.
interlocutor 8y ago
You can use a real database and have Excel like UI, plus data entry, with good reporting tools, here's one: http://pebblereports.com/ http://pebblereports.com/
MisterOctober 8y ago
There is iron in these words. I love using SQL and hate using Excel, but when it comes to common statistical calculations such as standard deviation or a Pearson function, or if you want to generate a graph and can't [or don't want to] use a tool such as Tableau or Crystal, Excel really is easier [or, at minimum, quicker] for generating output sometimes.
- Something1234 8y ago
  I absolutely hate plotting anything excel. I feel so stupid trying to get something to plot. GGPlot works so much better.
LaszloKv 8y ago
I wondered the same thing for a while. Just this week I came across https://www.knack.com/ https://www.knack.com/. It looks pretty good so far but I haven't really explored it yet to see how well it works out.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  I can't speak to the product, but I did interview and worked a trial week at knack about a year ago and they are a very bright group of people that are hell-bent on making and maintaining a great product.
gthtjtkt 8y ago
> but where is the visual data entry? That's where the "Power" suite enters the picture (Power Query, Power Pivot, etc.). Great way for non-technical people to get database data into Excel for reporting/analysis. I've trained plenty of people with only basic Excel skills to use it. The best part (for them) is that it's like a macro, so you can rerun it with new data any time. You can even use those to pull an existing SSRS report directly into Excel.
mch82 8y ago
Also, Excel is installed everywhere by default & not blocked by IT. Try getting approval to use Anaconda...
kevinpet 8y ago
Filemaker was great for this. Around 2000, you could get an amazing level of productivity for building small custom relatively complicated apps without writing any real code.
rabidrat 8y ago
Isn't this Salesforce?
CivBase 8y ago
Good manual data entry support is nice, but Excel sacrifices good automated data management to do it. Automating basic read and writes isn't terribly hard if you can find a good library, but it's still far more complicated than it needs to be.

by guelo 8y ago

Kagerjay 8y ago

Just use airtable, its like microsoft access but easier to use and pickup. Or just use google forms + google spreadsheets

schwinn 8y ago
Actually, I struggled making the transition to airtable from excel. Do you have recommendations for training? I do want to learn it, maybe no to a mastery level, but proficient
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  I actually didn't find any specific "airtable" training, I just used the docs and forums. I had prior knowledge working with microsoft access and database design, so airtable was an easy transition. If I were to learn it without any prior experience, I would just look through every template they have. See which industries I'm most familiar with. And look at how those databases are organized. https://airtable.com/templates https://airtable.com/templates They have a really good 12 minute overview though, hitting every major concept though. https://vimeo.com/165624533 https://vimeo.com/165624533 I would also learn a little bit about relational database design. This 5 minute video is a good starting point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvrpuBAMddw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvrpuBAMddw I like using databaseanswers.org as a reference resource. This is a very nice 5 minute introduction to designing a database. http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/5_minute_tutorials/feeding_time_at_the_zoo.htm http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/5_minute_tutorial... Basically, if you come from an excel background, it would help if you knew a little bit about database design, and relational databases. Its not necessary, but Airtable is practically excel + microsoft-access. Start with a template, and play around with it. I would get familiar with this page in particular though. Formula and lookups are something you'll use often in any airtable base. https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/202576519-Guide-to-formula-lookup-count-and-rollup-fields https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/202576519-Gui.... This was perhaps the least obvious concept for me to pickup naturally. If you need any help though feel free to reach out to me I have contact information on my username

sin7 8y ago

I use PostgreSQL, which is a real database. I use DBeaver as the database manager. It allows me to enter data by typing it in. For reports, I query the data. It has autocomplete. No forms. For presentation, I toss the data on Excel. Bold the headers. Change the number type (pct, $, etc) to the correct one. I would say that it has made my life a lot easier. There is one repository where the data is held. If I mess up, I go back to the master tables. In Excel, I would usually start over. Joins are easy. Excel can do some things better. When it can, then I use it. It's not a one or the other. It's ok to use both.

gerdesj 8y ago
Me too but throw in MariaDB as well (I'm not exactly bi-lingual but can speak both with a dodgy accent and know some words better in one and some in the other.) I use Libre Office because Excel doesn't work very well on Arch Linux out of the box.

daveslash 8y ago

Obligatory Comment: "Excel as a Database" by Rory Blyth, circa early 2000's. "As a developer, you've probably, at some unfortunate point in your life (possibly several points, actually), been handed an Excel file that has been crammed full of 'data' by someone in marketing and told to 'do something with it.' " http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
As a developer, what should I do if I actually want to do that? Because I get a lot of satisfaction out of massaging messy wads of data into a clean, uniform, accessible form. Is there a job title or something I should look for?
- snakeboy 8y ago
  "Data Scientist" should do the trick.
- codazoda 8y ago
  The Analytics team at my company does this. ETL's we call them (Export, Transform, Load). Some of us are app devs and some are data analysts; there's cross-over. We do other things too, but moving data between systems is a big part of it. As for job titles; Software Engineer (or Developer) of Analytics, Data Analyst, Data Scientist, or something along those lines. Probably varies by company.
  - zer00eyz 8y ago
    I have a story that may amuse you. Recently I worked on a contract doing some data ingestion that the resident team didn't want to deal with. They had been provided a JSON api to get what should have been a batch file. The owner/api creator said "this is good enough we won't accommodate you." So much for sensible data transmission and batch processing. Because I have had to deal with these sorts of things before I have a fairly robust tool chain to hammer api's with requests to get the data in a reasonable time frame. In this case my client went full tilt - and simply hammered the API till its owner gave in and started sending batch files.

foobarrio 8y ago

This was my reaction to Flash. It's not a "real" programming environment is what everyone told me. Yea but it was a great authoring tool for non hard-core programmers. I helped a designer write a few simple puzzle games in Flash and it was overall a productive experience. Had I attempted to do that in html/JS I'm not sure it would have gone so smoothly. I haven't tried to write web games in the last 10 years so maybe there's some collection of html/JS tools that lets me develop in a similarly. I'm willing to bet though they're 10x harder to set up and require command-line knowledge (fine for me, not so much my designer friend).

gowld 8y ago
Has anything replaced Flash as a productive way to build animated games?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mch82 8y ago
  Unity / Unreal (which can be quite accessible for projects that constrain themselves to built in features & asset store components)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Construct[0]. I used to sneer at such tools, considering them "not real gamedev". That was until, on one local edition of Global Game Jam, a designer in our team did in Construct in 15 minutes what took three of us coders a couple hours. This drove home the point that we were really overcomplicating things by coding a simple game from scratch (in XNA, back then). -- [0] - https://www.scirra.com/construct2 https://www.scirra.com/construct2 is the one I played with, but they also seem to have a web version now, for better or worse, which is available at https://www.scirra.com/ https://www.scirra.com/
derefr 8y ago

dustingetz 8y ago

http://www.hyperfiddle.net http://www.hyperfiddle.net

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

I read a thing a few months back about some Western game developers collaborating with Japanese counterparts for the first time, and their biggest surprise was that a whole lot of game data is stored in an Excel file during development. If you want to change an enemy's stats or a physics parameter, you don't dig through config files with a text editor, you just pull up the spreadsheet. Reportedly it made a lot of tweak-test-repeat work much quicker.

pmiller2 8y ago
I don’t understand how editing a number in an excel file is any easier than editing a number in a text file. What was it that made the difference?
- just_myles 8y ago
  I agree. Text file edit seems much quicker.
- vbezhenar 8y ago
  Probably table representation. It's relatively hard to implement something similar using text format. You can have row for every unit in the game with columns corresponding to various characteristics. It looks very natural in Excel, but it would require quite a lot of formatting and errors with text file. Also Excel could have formulas which might be useful somewhere and supporting formulas in config file is another level of complexity and almost certainly it'll be worse than Excel.
  - Nullabillity 8y ago
    Then use a real database. You probably have a SQLite dependency anyway, so take advantage of it. Or don't, since SCMs are much better at diffing plain text than either. > Also Excel could have formulas which might be useful somewhere and supporting formulas in config file is another level of complexity and almost certainly it'll be worse than Excel. You'll have an easier time reimplementing Excel's formula system than basic arithmetic? I find that hard to believe.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

merb 8y ago

basically you can use excel to query postgresql. either with Power Query and NPGSQL or for the more non developer experience you can buy an addin: https://www.devart.com/excel-addins/postgresql.html https://www.devart.com/excel-addins/postgresql.html

Nullabillity 8y ago

> People say "use a real database", fine, but where is the visual data entry? Any visual DB client? > Where are the easy adhoc reports? Isn't that just queries? Then throw it into a view to "save". > Where are the forms? No idea what you're looking for here, but this sounds a lot like your first question.

yawaramin 8y ago
Ad-hoc reports are not just saved queries, they're saved queries + something like Word's mail merge feature so that you get a data-driven, print-quality document, like an invoice. Forms are data entry views that save to the backing tables. Nowadays the most well-known forms are probably https://docs.google.com/forms/ https://docs.google.com/forms/

ryanmonroe 8y ago

Not having a good data entry gui is the biggest benefit of not-excel in my experience. 90% of the time your data has a real source that's not "Jim's head" and you should find a way to impute the data from that source directly, avoiding the ever-present inaccuracies that come from human-imputed data.

acct1771 8y ago
Was the typo to drive home your point?
- mclehman 8y ago
  My guess is that they meant this definition of impute, and are advocating for removing Jim's inferences entirely. Impute (finance): assign (a value) to something by inference from the value of the products or processes to which it contributes.
paultopia 8y ago
Also, even when you need human entered data, a spreadsheet is waaaaay too easy to make typos with, like putting things in the wrong row/column, overwriting previous entries, etc. Use a form.

interlocutor 8y ago

You can use a real database and have Excel like UI, plus data entry, with good reporting tools, here's one: http://pebblereports.com/ http://pebblereports.com/

MisterOctober 8y ago

There is iron in these words. I love using SQL and hate using Excel, but when it comes to common statistical calculations such as standard deviation or a Pearson function, or if you want to generate a graph and can't [or don't want to] use a tool such as Tableau or Crystal, Excel really is easier [or, at minimum, quicker] for generating output sometimes.

Something1234 8y ago
I absolutely hate plotting anything excel. I feel so stupid trying to get something to plot. GGPlot works so much better.

LaszloKv 8y ago

I wondered the same thing for a while. Just this week I came across https://www.knack.com/ https://www.knack.com/. It looks pretty good so far but I haven't really explored it yet to see how well it works out.

Klathmon 8y ago
I can't speak to the product, but I did interview and worked a trial week at knack about a year ago and they are a very bright group of people that are hell-bent on making and maintaining a great product.

gthtjtkt 8y ago

> but where is the visual data entry? That's where the "Power" suite enters the picture (Power Query, Power Pivot, etc.). Great way for non-technical people to get database data into Excel for reporting/analysis. I've trained plenty of people with only basic Excel skills to use it. The best part (for them) is that it's like a macro, so you can rerun it with new data any time. You can even use those to pull an existing SSRS report directly into Excel.

mch82 8y ago

Also, Excel is installed everywhere by default & not blocked by IT. Try getting approval to use Anaconda...

kevinpet 8y ago

Filemaker was great for this. Around 2000, you could get an amazing level of productivity for building small custom relatively complicated apps without writing any real code.

rabidrat 8y ago

Isn't this Salesforce?

CivBase 8y ago

Good manual data entry support is nice, but Excel sacrifices good automated data management to do it. Automating basic read and writes isn't terribly hard if you can find a good library, but it's still far more complicated than it needs to be.