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A Relational Spreadsheet

kevinlynagh.com

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Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#21

Post by switch007 »

capableweb wrote: post #18
inglor wrote: post #12

Excel has get and transform that makes this easy + an odbc provider (you can query excel as an sql database). A reminder for everyone excel web is actually entirely free and you can create stuff with https://excel.new We spent a lot of time making it faster and rewrote a bunch of it ^^ (I'm just an engineer, I don't speak for my corporate overlords)

excel.new has a "weird" TLD, no mention of Microsoft in the domain and asks me to auth with my Microsoft account before I can even see the site. If I came across this in the wild, I'd for sure think this is some phishing or generally bad website.

Agreed. That’s bad even for Microsoft.

What is wrong with excel.office.com with a version toggle?

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#22

Post by cldellow »

capableweb wrote: post #18
inglor wrote: post #12

Excel has get and transform that makes this easy + an odbc provider (you can query excel as an sql database). A reminder for everyone excel web is actually entirely free and you can create stuff with https://excel.new We spent a lot of time making it faster and rewrote a bunch of it ^^ (I'm just an engineer, I don't speak for my corporate overlords)

excel.new has a "weird" TLD, no mention of Microsoft in the domain and asks me to auth with my Microsoft account before I can even see the site. If I came across this in the wild, I'd for sure think this is some phishing or generally bad website.

Those are all valid points, of course, and you can navigate to excel.office.com if you don't trust the OP (although it will also immediately redirect you to an auth window)

The .new TLD is pretty nifty. sheets.new gets you the same thing as excel.new, but for Google.

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#23

Post by totalhack »

somat wrote: post #2

I want the same, I want it so much that I have been working on gasp gui code to do such, an activity I have found I am profoundly bad at. But the theory is, I love the relational database, they are a sort of rigorous superset of the spreadsheet, and I have replaced all my spreadsheets with database tables, however while it is very hard to beat sql for rich comprehensive data transforms and analysis, ad-hoc data entry…

Check out NocoDB for an open alternative to AirTable.

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#24

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

somat wrote: post #2

I want the same, I want it so much that I have been working on gasp gui code to do such, an activity I have found I am profoundly bad at. But the theory is, I love the relational database, they are a sort of rigorous superset of the spreadsheet, and I have replaced all my spreadsheets with database tables, however while it is very hard to beat sql for rich comprehensive data transforms and analysis, ad-hoc data entry…

Microsoft Access is this. It was quite popular in its heyday, but as time wore on, it turned out that people eventually either want scalable, real, full-blown databases, or infinitely flexible spreadsheets. Anything built with a product in that grey area in between will eventually want to go one way or the other.

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#25

Post by erichocean »

somat wrote: post #2

I want the same, I want it so much that I have been working on gasp gui code to do such, an activity I have found I am profoundly bad at. But the theory is, I love the relational database, they are a sort of rigorous superset of the spreadsheet, and I have replaced all my spreadsheets with database tables, however while it is very hard to beat sql for rich comprehensive data transforms and analysis, ad-hoc data entry…

> I want one for quick random edit.

DBeaver fills that need for me.

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#26

Post by burcs »

somat wrote: post #2

I want the same, I want it so much that I have been working on gasp gui code to do such, an activity I have found I am profoundly bad at. But the theory is, I love the relational database, they are a sort of rigorous superset of the spreadsheet, and I have replaced all my spreadsheets with database tables, however while it is very hard to beat sql for rich comprehensive data transforms and analysis, ad-hoc data entry…

We're building www.outerbase.com to support this use case. We're in the latest YC batch and are hoping to do a launch HN in the near future, but would love to hear your thoughts on what we've built if you are up for checking it out!

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#27

Post by ghaff »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #24
somat wrote: post #2

I want the same, I want it so much that I have been working on gasp gui code to do such, an activity I have found I am profoundly bad at. But the theory is, I love the relational database, they are a sort of rigorous superset of the spreadsheet, and I have replaced all my spreadsheets with database tables, however while it is very hard to beat sql for rich comprehensive data transforms and analysis, ad-hoc data entry…

Microsoft Access is this. It was quite popular in its heyday, but as time wore on, it turned out that people eventually either want scalable, real, full-blown databases, or infinitely flexible spreadsheets. Anything built with a product in that grey area in between will eventually want to go one way or the other.

We've seen the same phenomenon in word processing/desktop publishing. We've mostly seen people coalesce around Microsoft Word and its online counterpart/competitors or go full-on desktop publishing with InDesign. People have mostly moved away from lightweight desktop publishing programs for newsletters and the like.

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#28

Post by chroteus »

Just throwing it around, but there is Apache Calcite, a DBMS without the Database part. It's an SQL parsing, logical & physical plan building framework. It's pretty much a DBMS without any database of its own. You can program up an adapter for "whatever you want" pretty much and query "whatever you want" with SQL.

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#29

Post by deepspace »

SloopJon wrote: post #5
somat wrote: post #2

I want the same, I want it so much that I have been working on gasp gui code to do such, an activity I have found I am profoundly bad at. But the theory is, I love the relational database, they are a sort of rigorous superset of the spreadsheet, and I have replaced all my spreadsheets with database tables, however while it is very hard to beat sql for rich comprehensive data transforms and analysis, ad-hoc data entry…

If you're asking for a GUI for simple CRUD on an arbitrary table, I think that's pretty common. What database are you using, and what API are you using to access it? (Edit: and on what O/S?) If one of the obstacles to data entry is normalization, perhaps an updatable view if your database supports it.

> I think that's pretty common.

Not as common as you might think. It is a hard thing to search for, and the ones I have been able to find all suck.

I wrote a PHP application a long time that allowed you to create a GUI for an 'arbitrary' SQL database table, using an XML schema to configure the appearance, validation etc. of the fields. Life got in the way, and I stopped development before it was ready for prime time. Fifteen years later, I went looking for something with similar functionality and was surprised at how few options there still were.

Re: A Relational Spreadsheet

#30

Post by plaidfuji »

Bigquery is so deeply integrated with Sheets these days that you can establish live links from specified tabs to BQ (applying a SQL schema in transit), and vice versa, such that you can build a SQL layer into your spreadsheet “backend”. Bigquery is so cheap on data of that size that you’ll never realize significant cost, and provides a great query builder GUI on top.
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