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Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

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Re: Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

#71

Post by srcreigh »

nonethewiser wrote: post #49
vaughan wrote: post #33

Spreadsheets are rather peculiar. I don't think anyone would come up with the concept of them today. This "fill formula down/right" feature is so strange. A developer would be like: let's just set a formula for the entire column, and make it refer to another column. And let's name the columns something. Like Airtable. But its surpringly flexible and hackable. I wish there was something like GSheets + Airtable.

> let's just set a formula for the entire column, and make it refer to another column. And let's name the columns something. I don’t understand because you obviously can do this with sheets/excel

Enter the formula on row 1, copy it, select the column and paste

Re: Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

#72

Post by pbmango »

This is very cool and could be the basis for a huge set of interesting operations - but any time I read about DB Spreadsheet discussions they seem to be started by folks who much better understand DBs.

The principle use of the spreadsheet for both power users and casual users is a lot around justifying answers by being able to see the data. The goal is not speed or scale.

If you and sending a report to a superior - clear and visible rows, columns, and "math" makes it faster and easier to trust information for non-technical users.

This same logic is why the spreadsheet is best serving customized, one-off, or changing operations without a huge amount of data. This makes up a huge chunk of day-to-day business decisions, especially in finance where the math is much easier.

I don't think the spreadsheet lasts forever, but its successor will likely be something that presents an easy way to get answers from a set of data that is visible or at least able to be quickly understood, regardless of whether its fast, scalable, networked etc.

Re: Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

#75

Post by Jakob »

vaughan wrote: post #33

Spreadsheets are rather peculiar. I don't think anyone would come up with the concept of them today. This "fill formula down/right" feature is so strange. A developer would be like: let's just set a formula for the entire column, and make it refer to another column. And let's name the columns something. Like Airtable. But its surpringly flexible and hackable. I wish there was something like GSheets + Airtable.

> set a formula for the entire column

Spreadsheet power users on both excel and sheets do exactly that. It’s called array formula. Press cmd-shift-enter on the cell with the formula and it’s valid for the entire column and can be changed in one central place.

Re: Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

#76

Post by lkirk »

pbmango wrote: post #72

This is very cool and could be the basis for a huge set of interesting operations - but any time I read about DB Spreadsheet discussions they seem to be started by folks who much better understand DBs. The principle use of the spreadsheet for both power users and casual users is a lot around justifying answers by being able to see the data. The goal is not speed or scale. If you and sending a report to a superior - c…

Yes, I would agree that technical and non-technical usability is one appealing spreadsheet use case. I think that another thing I find myself using spreadsheets for is simple data entry. By using a google sheet to enter data, you've already got yourself an authenticated, multi-user web form for easily entering data. It even integrates with google forms, which is a very handy tool for collecting data. It's certainly a lot easier than building it all yourself and hosting it.

Once the data is entered, there are much better tools for data visualization and aggregation (in my opinion). It's nice to have the "frontend" taken care of so that your time is freed up to analyze and extract meaning from the data. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who does a lot of rapid prototyping and data analysis. There are likely use cases where this won't scale.

Re: Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

#77

Post by samstave »

fulafel wrote: post #27
mixcocam wrote: post #11

You can just use curl to get the csv from the gayest and pipe into SQLite using the .import command. Not sure what this has on top of that.

For one, there's no CSV standard and often csv based data exchange methods have lurking (and/or obvious) correctness problems. Maybe gsheets and sqlite are lucky there, maybe not. This project is also well documented including the gsheets side (which is quite non-obvious).

>>"(which is quite non-obvious)."

ELI5 what this means, please? (unpack this for the ignorant among us, plz)

Re: Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

#78

Post by charlie0 »

I could see this being very useful. I uploaded a 70MB xls file to Sheets and Chrome says that tab is 600MB to 800MB of RAM. I ran a Find operation and that spiked up to 1.2GB of RAM. How 70MB of data turns into over 1GB of RAM is beyond me.

Re: Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

#79

Post by DANmode »

jeffbee wrote: post #30
sokoloff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheets has a human-friendly, readily-understood, multi-user capable user interface. You’re likely correct that $5/mo isn’t the barrier to switching.

Sheets are also geo-replicated and have infinite version history. I seriously doubt that anyone has ever lost data in Sheets.

But are they always aware when correct version isn't current version?

Re: Libgsqlite: A SQLite extension which loads a Google Sheet as a virtual table

#80

Post by mafro »

Tools such as steampipe, and Python pandas/gspread make it pretty trivial to get data and push it out into Google Sheets as a front end.

eg. I frequently use Google Sheets as the UI for simple and complex projects. The web front end is provided by Google, as is the identity/auth part. You only have to worry about important part - the data.

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