spreadsheet vs. database

[Mixolydian]

To be honest I've never really used any "business"/productivity applications besides word processors. One thing that has me wondering is, what's the difference between spreadsheets and databases? My understanding is that they are both used to store/sort/manage information.

In what circumstances would you use a spreadsheet (MS Excel, etc.) over a database (Access, FileMaker, or even SQL) and vice-versa?

 

[stargazr]

If you're working with numbers...let's say you have a page of sales from a business. You can program the cells so that it will add the numbers at the bottom of the column. No matter if you add or remove items, it will adjust accordingly.

That's just a simple example, spreadsheets have many applications.

 

[Kaido]

A database is basically just a bunch of spreadsheets, hidden from the user, with better search & view tools. It's useful when you have a lot of data or want to share the data with multiple users, or if you want the data presented in a specific way (Access uses forms, which are kind of like website payment checkouts - you can design a page with different fields for searching, sorting, and input).

Most of the time you can get away with making a spreadsheet, especially because modern versions of Excel are so insanely powerful. You'd be amazed at what you can do in Excel these days. I had a professor who taught Excel & CAD classes and his CAD classes were the "easy" ones haha.

 

[IronWing]

If you have multivariate data you'll quickly discover the limitations of spreadsheets. I use spreadsheets everyday but some stuff just has to go in a database.

 

[ssm0002]

Agreed. Spreadsheets have their limitations especially as the amount of data you are running through a pivot table increases. Seen it happen too many times.

 

[JasonCoder]

Agreed. Spreadsheets have their limitations especially as the amount of data you are running through a pivot table increases. Seen it happen too many times.

Take a look at PowerPivot. It is essentially a full data warehouse cube contained within your local spreadsheet. Yeah.

 

[ringtail]

for starters you can visualize the difference like this: spreadsheets are 2-D, database is 3-D.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/tutorial.html