Can an Excel spreadsheet be converted to a database application?

Converting Excel applications into databases

When I.T. literate staff with no database development expertise attempt to produce a database they will often use a spreadsheet.

Spreadsheets like Excel are familiar to them, and they know they can come up with something that addresses the problem at least partially.

However, the Excel developer soon realises that Excel, like any other spreadsheet does not make a good database development tool, and a fully fledged database is really required. But how difficult is it to convert the spreadsheet into a database?

Converting an Excel spreadsheet into a database

There a number of steps necessary to convert an Excel spreadsheet into a database application, but the most important step has already been undertaken - the step where someone sits down and tries to understand the problem.

I call this step systems analysis., and if undertaken properly gives the project an excellent chance of success.

The consequence of the systems analysis stage should be that the requirements of the database are fully understood. But what is the next stage?

Converting to a database from Excel

Converting to a database, entails a series of steps

• Know what you want the database to do. This shapes every aspect of subsequent development.
• Break the sheets up into separate logical groups of information called tables. This process is called normalisation.
• Join the tables so they are related to each other, and can talk to each other. For example, a car may have many services, but the information about the car is stored separately to the information about the service. That information is joined up at some time by the database, and tells us in this case what services this car has had.
• Implement forms that present these tables in a way that allows their contents to be edited, deleted, and presented
• Introduce business rules that control how the data can be entered.
• Test this prototype with the help of the original Excel developer.

What is our I.T. future?

I believe our key database applications will be with us around the clock.

They will run quite happily in our pockets in our mobile phones. They will store their data on the cloud (if we trust it) or on tiny super efficient SQLite databases on the phone itself.

Either wirelessly (if we trust the network) or via a cable we will connect our mobile to a full size monitor and keyboard to turn our minuscule, but indispensable phone into an indispensable desktop computer and work with it more intuitively than most typical desktop computers.

Already the phone is triumphant as our most useful possession. Good I.T. systems will just make it more so.