The quick, blunt answer to the question above is that spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel and SQL are actually quite different things. They all basically work on structured data or tables. But SQL is, comparatively, a more complex computer language to communicate with through a different set of applications known as relational database management systems (rdms). And so it’s not surprising that there are some differences between these two popular spreadsheet tools.
One of the main differences lies in how users can access and manipulate the information within the spreadsheets. Excel allows changes to be made to rows and columns and can be edited by multiple users at the same time. On the other hand, SQL queries must be made directly by using a query. This means that there can be a certain level of data integrity with spreadsheets that can’t be done with SQL queries. There’s a caveat to this though – even if you can make a SQL query to access the data within an Excel table, an error will still likely be logged in the Excel file as opposed to a SQL statement.
This brings us to one of the main advantages of MySQL and Excel: the smaller datasets (tables) make it easier to run a smaller transaction per second. When data is spread across many computers running MySQL on every machine, the database is slower. On the other hand, running MySQL on a smaller subset of machines means that the transaction speeds are much faster than with the entire database. This is why so many small businesses use spreadsheets – they’re just too hard to maintain on a large scale.
Of course, the biggest difference between spreadsheets and databases is that spreadsheets don’t have to maintain tables. The creation, modification, and retrieval of tables in spreadsheets are a different process entirely. This results in a shorter life cycle for spreadsheets. In addition, spreadsheets themselves aren’t safe. If a person were to download a virus that corrupts the spreadsheet, all of the spreadsheets in the server would be ruined.
With databases, however, data transfer is a very real problem. It’s not only common, but it’s a serious issue. Most small businesses simply can’t afford to lose business because they happened to store all of their financial data in a badly designed database. MySQL and Excel can solve this problem, making data transfer easier than ever before.
For example, if you have two spreadsheets side by side on your desk, each representing a small company with ten thousand employees, how likely are you to have data loss due to a spreadsheet error? Chances are pretty good that Excel will win every time. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for databases. Even if two database management systems are installed on the same server, each system will have to work on its own. It’s as though these two computers are on another planet and each one is trying to send information from one end of the galaxy to the other.
If you’re an analytics company, your databases will allow you to send alerts whenever certain aspects of your business change. You might want to check the attendance of employees at the beginning and end of the work day, or monthly employee records for key metrics. Maybe you want to see how sales are going over the past few months and what the drop offs are. Database management systems can send you all of this information without the spreadsheets ever having to be updated.
This brings us to the final point: no matter what you’re doing, you need database administrators. If you don’t have one, your system is doomed. There’s a reason why the database management system in Facebook is called “spreadsheets” and not “spreadsheets.” No matter how well you use your spreadsheets, you’ll still need someone to make the appropriate changes. No matter how great your database is, if you don’t have someone to make backups and run your applications, your day to day operations are toast.