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> For example, after creating an Excel table, you add a filter, see the changed data. Add a WHERE. > You can Ctrl-Z for undo. Drop the WHERE. Hell, ctrl+z wi

> For example, after creating an Excel table, you add a filter, see the changed data. Add a WHERE. > You can Ctrl-Z for undo. Drop the WHERE. Hell, ctrl+z will work fine here too! > sort on many columns ORDER BY supports multiple columns too. > create derived columns and sort on those You can have arbitrary expressions in your SELECT clause. > and all of this interactively. Destructively*. And SQL makes it clear exactly what you've done to the source data in order to get there. > Also, excel supports far more mathematical functions. Surely that's what extensions are for!

ALittleLight 7y ago
Earlier today I was looking at data from two different sources about the same thing. I wanted to see how similar the reports were. I grepped my logs, got columns of data, copied and pasted into Excel, created a line chart, copied and pasted the line chart into an email to a colleague. How would SQL let me do the same thing? With Excel this was probably less than a minute end to end. Would SQL be as fast? Keeping in mind that I wouldn't have a database for any of the data I was looking at.
- hoistbypetard 7y ago
  Concur. For whacking out a quick analysis like that, it's hard to beat a spreadsheet. (I do like Excel, but no longer think it's all that far ahead of LibreOffice for most things I tend to use it for.) It's also good for creating what amounts to a quick interactive form. But I've lost count of how many times I've run across a spreadsheet being misused as a shitty, ad-hoc database where it'd be less work (and less error-prone) to just use sqlite (or even postgres, honestly), so I have some empathy for GP's perspective.
rabidrat 7y ago
In SQL, how can I search all columns which contain some text?
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  If you don't have any meaningful column structure then you won't be able to do any useful analysis anyway.

ALittleLight 7y ago

Earlier today I was looking at data from two different sources about the same thing. I wanted to see how similar the reports were. I grepped my logs, got columns of data, copied and pasted into Excel, created a line chart, copied and pasted the line chart into an email to a colleague. How would SQL let me do the same thing? With Excel this was probably less than a minute end to end. Would SQL be as fast? Keeping in mind that I wouldn't have a database for any of the data I was looking at.

hoistbypetard 7y ago
Concur. For whacking out a quick analysis like that, it's hard to beat a spreadsheet. (I do like Excel, but no longer think it's all that far ahead of LibreOffice for most things I tend to use it for.) It's also good for creating what amounts to a quick interactive form. But I've lost count of how many times I've run across a spreadsheet being misused as a shitty, ad-hoc database where it'd be less work (and less error-prone) to just use sqlite (or even postgres, honestly), so I have some empathy for GP's perspective.

rabidrat 7y ago

In SQL, how can I search all columns which contain some text?

Nullabillity 7y ago
If you don't have any meaningful column structure then you won't be able to do any useful analysis anyway.