[Discuss] Frustration with SQL and Spreadsheets

[Rich Pieri]

On Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:21:43 -0400
markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:

> One of the things I have to do a lot is transfer data to and from
> spreadsheets. Its so frustrating that they are essentially the same
> concept: an X/Y grid of cells is virtually identical to rows and
> columns.

This is not a valid premise. A spreadsheet has infinite rows and
infinite columns. A SQL table has infinite records (rows) of *finite*
columns.

Here's a contrived example: an address book. You have columns labeled
first name, last name, email address, phone number, street address. In
the spreadsheet version you can add extra columns to a row for ZIP
Code, an alternate email address or phone number, etc., without
affecting any other rows. You can't do this in the SQL table version
because the structure of each record (row) is fixed to first, last,
email, phone, street. You would have to refactor your database schema
to accommodate the new columns and rebase your data to fit the new
record format so that every record in the table now includes the new
columns.

This is a simple example. I'm sure a SQL DBA could tell you all about
how relational tables and pivot tables and all that stuff work, and why
trying to represent those structures as spreadsheets is going to be a
big mess.

Or I could just point out that Microsoft have never implemented a "Save
as Excel" function for Access despite the nigh-infinite requests for
one.

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