Large data sources

[hware]

Hello. I'm new to the forum and a basic user of Excel.

I'm doing research on how Excel users deal with large data sources (imports). I recently posted a MS Access database application at download.com called "QueryEasy". The main purpose of my app is to perform basic querying on large data sources and it is aim at non-Access users, in particular Excel users. It is not the intent to replace Excel as a tool but as a supplement. I would very much like to know what or how data sources are dealt inside Excel (i.e. Query Wizard) or outside from an Excel user's point of view. Right now, I'm looking at ways to improve my app. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks for your time.

hware

[harrywaldron]

Hi hware and welcome to the forums

I've had quite a bit of similar experience as I use Qwest's Toad SQL-Browser's to export Oracle table rows to Excel documents for my own analysis or to provide analytical reports to end-users.

Some quick thoughts:

1. Excel has a row limitation of 64K (e.g., 65,536 rows) ... I had read that Excel 2007 can now handle 1 million rows, but definitely won't recommend porting that much data to a spreadsheet. The fewer the # of rows and columns, the better for both performance and disk space used.

2. From an end-user perspective, the more structured the data elements are in Excel, the better (e.g., date, currency, numerical and other formats)

3. The capability to create meaningful headers on rows or labels on columns might be beneficial (as sometimes data base names may not be meaningful to the end-user)

4. The capability to select just the columns (fields) or rows (desirable record sets) may be important to the end user for performance and readability perspectives in Excel.

5. In the "nice to have" column, Pivoted views and even graphical Excel outputs might be beneficial to the end-user

Good luck with your new add-on tool

[hware]

Thanks harrywaldron for the comments and suggestions!

I will definitely take those points into serious consideration. It is always good to read different perspectives from different users.

I'm hoping to get more replies like this one.

Thanks again!


hware