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Maybe I don't know enough about spreadsheets but two dimensions isn't enough for most applications. Maybe pivot tables? They are too hard to figure out. Need so

Maybe I don't know enough about spreadsheets but two dimensions isn't enough for most applications. Maybe pivot tables? They are too hard to figure out. Need something like "SQLSheet" that takes a more complex data structure and presents viewing and editing it in a natural way with drill down and joins etc. AI should be able to help you design the DB and then create a tool to interact with it.

riffraff 1y ago
Microsoft Access?
- incone123 1y ago
  If someone is going to invest the time in learning how to design a database and how to build a UI then they might as well do so on something more modern.
withinboredom 1y ago
The people using these sheets have no idea what you’re talking about. They use multiple sheets to layer the dimensions and understand pivot tables perfectly.
- Tabular-Iceberg 1y ago
  Are people who understand relational databases and people who understand pivot tables disjoint sets? I can look at someone’s finished pivot table and reproduce it from the data through other means, but any explanation of what a pivot table actually is and does reads like pure gibberish to me.
  - withinboredom 1y ago
    Probably. A pivot table is basically a way to turn on one of the dimensions of the sheet to make sense of the data. Like "show me all invoices, grouped by date and sum each group". It is effectively a query, in a way that makes sense for people working in spreadsheets.
  - incone123 1y ago
    It is certainly much easier to shown than to tell about pivot tables. I tried to think of a good form of words to explain them but couldn't.
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    The pivot tables don't require people to understand data normalization and software maintenance good practices. Outside of that, yeah, not really relational databases because those focus on having more than one table, but they do understand relations.
  - lmwnshn 1y ago
    Check out the full version of Towards Scalable Dataframe Systems from VLDB 2020 [0]. They propose an algebra for dataframes and section 4.4's example succinctly describes the pivot operator. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00888 https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00888

riffraff 1y ago

Microsoft Access?

incone123 1y ago
If someone is going to invest the time in learning how to design a database and how to build a UI then they might as well do so on something more modern.

withinboredom 1y ago

The people using these sheets have no idea what you’re talking about. They use multiple sheets to layer the dimensions and understand pivot tables perfectly.

Tabular-Iceberg 1y ago
Are people who understand relational databases and people who understand pivot tables disjoint sets? I can look at someone’s finished pivot table and reproduce it from the data through other means, but any explanation of what a pivot table actually is and does reads like pure gibberish to me.
- withinboredom 1y ago
  Probably. A pivot table is basically a way to turn on one of the dimensions of the sheet to make sense of the data. Like "show me all invoices, grouped by date and sum each group". It is effectively a query, in a way that makes sense for people working in spreadsheets.
- incone123 1y ago
  It is certainly much easier to shown than to tell about pivot tables. I tried to think of a good form of words to explain them but couldn't.
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  The pivot tables don't require people to understand data normalization and software maintenance good practices. Outside of that, yeah, not really relational databases because those focus on having more than one table, but they do understand relations.
- lmwnshn 1y ago
  Check out the full version of Towards Scalable Dataframe Systems from VLDB 2020 [0]. They propose an algebra for dataframes and section 4.4's example succinctly describes the pivot operator. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00888 https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.00888