Excel offers large Worksheets. Data can be arranged and stored flexibly, searched and acted upon. Do we have a Database here? * Let’s sort out Excel as a Database.

What is a Database?

Simply speaking, a database is any structure in which data is to be arranged along with tools to store, manipulate and retrieve the data.

Several such pre-configured “data arrangements” are available as products, each developed in its time to solve data-related challenges. Let’s mention a couple.

Relational Database: In a relational database data is arranged in tables with relations...

If you ever needed to query Excel tables (and who hasn’t) from your VBA programs that contained thousands of rows, or join multiple tables in the process – this is the Blog post you’ve been waiting for * Write complex SQL queries over Excel tables as if they were stored in a relational database

Do SQL and Excel go together?

YES!

SQL is the most popular Databases language. It is robust, proven and works with extremely large tables stored in any common relational Database software. If you want to learn more about Databases and SQL – read my last week’s Blog post...

If you are in anyway related to software in the service of organizations – you MUST be familiar with Relational Databases * Let’s understand the basics of RDB: what, why, strengths and weaknesses

The Beginning

Relational Databases (RDB) drive nearly all of the information systems in the service of any organization today. Despite being a central and critical technology, it’s only 40 years old, 10 years younger than me.

It was Edgar Codd from IBM who first devised the RDB concept in the early 1970’s. Only in 1978 was the first commercial RDBMS (Relational Database...