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What does “connect” mean in this context? Read data from SQL server into an excel spreadsheet?
by pletnes 6y ago
What does “connect” mean in this context? Read data from SQL server into an excel spreadsheet?
- pc86 6y agoNot the GP but yes I've seen a lot of folks go through the Data tab in Excel and connect to a SQL database to display data directly.
- ComodoHacker 6y agoExcel can connect to PostgreSQL as well.
- vetinari 6y agoYes, it can on Windows, both via psqlODBC and Npgsql, when you find out which .net runtime version your Excel version uses. On Mac, it is more interesting; there's only ODBC, Microsoft doesn't support the same psqlODBC you can use in Windows and you have to purchase one of the supported commercial ODBC drivers.
- xupybd 6y agoYes but not with the same ease :)
- xupybd 6y agoExactly that. It's a nightmare to maintain but business types seem to demand it.
- petepete 6y agoI used to work at big hospital that had a home-grown 'reporting system' built with Excel, data connections to an SQL Server database, and a series of pivot tables. Every morning from 8-9am the whole network would slow as people opened their spreadsheet and it basically did a `select * from a_rather_large_view` - tens of gigabytes flying around (this was in the mid 2000s.) There was resistance after a data warehouse (BO) was introduced because pivot tables were so flexible and well-understood.