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How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

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Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#61

Post by hackerews »

bradleyland wrote: post #58
kyllo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally would not want to be responsible for security for a web-based Access clone. Enormous attack surface area. But I think Access is awesome for making and battle-testing prototypes that can eventually become actual CRUD apps. Great intermediate step somewhere in-between e-mailing spreadsheets and building a Rails app, for getting shit done at the office.

Agree 100% on this. To truly replicate Access online, you'll have to provide some sort of scripting interface that is moderately performant. Seems like a complete nightmare.

Scripting for access? How so? I thought it was only queries and forms.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#62

Post by F_J_H »

mavhc wrote: post #10

Where's the free, web based, easy to use database, the web version of MS Access?

Check out Oracle's Application Express (APEX). I was an MS Access developer way, way back, an Apex is a very close replacement. And, you can use it with the free version of Oracle (XE), which gives you 11GB. Plenty for small projects.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#63

Post by kyllo »

hackerews wrote: post #61
bradleyland wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree 100% on this. To truly replicate Access online, you'll have to provide some sort of scripting interface that is moderately performant. Seems like a complete nightmare.

Scripting for access? How so? I thought it was only queries and forms.

Three letters: VBA.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#66

Post by Ciantic »

I have used Google Spreadsheet as a database, the hassle is not worth it. You need to do some serious caching: insert caching, update caching etc. The API calls weren't very sturdy few years ago.

Even then you hesitate to give rights to laymen to edit the spreadsheet since everything breaks if they screw up. And what is the point if it can't be shared?

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#67

Post by Ciantic »

ecesena wrote: post #29

I'm a big fan of spreadsheets instead of db -- it has it's limitations of course, but works great for apps with a few thousand read-only records (items/products or even just text captions). I built HasGluten [1, 2] with react + google spreadsheet, hosted on github for free, you get a cheap, scalable, geo-distributed software stack, with simple interfaces to maintain both code (GitHub Pages) and data (Google Sheets —…

Your HasGluten is interesting.

You probably should try to do international free wiki-like open database of all foods with EAN codes. Maybe Fitbit and other vendors could chip in to provide food details.

I would love to scan all my food EAN codes and see in the computer what I have in my refrigator in calories, protein etc.

P.S. Google spreadsheet is not enough for database of all the world's food

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#68

Post by donpinkus »

jedschmidt wrote: post #51

I really like the idea of using Google Spreadsheets as a quick and familiar GUI for entry or querying on data sets, as long as you understand the tradeoffs (write latency isn't great and they max out at 400,000 cells). But this is especially nice when you build a layer on top of Google reduces lock-in, instead of adding another proprietary API. This is what I did with sheet-down[1], which turns a Google Spreadsheet i…

They upped the limit from 400,000 cells - I think it's around 2M now, will try to find the source

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#69

Post by chunkiestbacon »

ecesena wrote: post #29

I'm a big fan of spreadsheets instead of db -- it has it's limitations of course, but works great for apps with a few thousand read-only records (items/products or even just text captions). I built HasGluten [1, 2] with react + google spreadsheet, hosted on github for free, you get a cheap, scalable, geo-distributed software stack, with simple interfaces to maintain both code (GitHub Pages) and data (Google Sheets —…

Very cool. I sent you a pull request.

Re: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as a database

#70

Post by bcRIPster »

crdb wrote: post #54
bcRIPster wrote: post #26

A spreadsheet is NOT a database! Argh! As a person who gets asked to fix these kinds of projects once they hit a wall (performance/concurrency/etc) and then have to migrate them to a proper DB platform, just stop it! Put it on in a DB up front and save some poor developer their sanity. Please.

Thank you! I was thinking exactly the same thing! Want a cheap database? A Postgres RDS micro instance costs $51 a year upfront or $0.018 per hour. Medium is $200 or $0.073, and that medium instance will probably be more than enough for a dozen projects. You get the solidity and ease of use of PostgreSQL with all the admin details abstracted away by RDS, and you can be up and running in 10 minutes or less. Get AWS ac…

High-five. I like your thinking!
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