Network Operations Guide

Wed Aug 22 21:51:54 UTC 2007

Deepak Jain wrote:
> 
>> Once a spreadsheet starts to become a valuable source of data, the data
>> should be stuffed into the database where it can be shared, kept up to
>> date, be viewed consistently by all parts of the business, and joined
>> with other data for reporting purposes. Then, when it makes sense to
>> build or buy an application centered around a database, you already have
>> a source of clean consistent data ready and waiting.
> 
> I'm guessing there is a tool somewhere that will take a set of data from
> a database and present it like a spreadsheet for import/export of
> updates. Anyone have a pointer?

This used to be the key feature of relational databases...

In a desktop computing context people do this with microsoft access and
filemaker routinely...

These days however people have gotten so used to doing web interfaces to
tables in sql databases that it's pretty trivial even with a cookbook to
whip something up in php that will allow you view a table, do a select,
and perform an insert update or delete on the changed or added row.

> Is anyone doing anything fancy like exporting their Visio to CSV some
> other sort for inclusion into a database as meta data? (for viewing one
> would grab the data and then ask Visio to render it)
> 
> DJ
> 