Linux Fails the Scotland Police Dept. 4465

Tim Smith The problem I have with a spreadsheet program is that the program for each cell is hidden and fragmented. For example, some cell may be the XIRR of a couple of other columns, but if the entries in either (or both) of those columns is also computed, the cascading of computations is not obvious, and therefore, is very difficult to verify. With some spreadsheets, it is even worse as the content of the cells can come from anywhere on the Internet and the user may not know that, may not have control over the web sites from which the data are obtained, etc. So you never know what you will be getting.

With a dbms, the program is normally written in a combination of (Embedded) SQL and some higher level language that, if well designed, is fairly easy to exhibit and verify, compared with the same thing in a spreadsheet. Furthermore, with a large number of rows in a spreadsheet, the problems of data integrety are really difficult to manage because I am unaware of people doing relational joins on multiple spreadsheets and so the difficulties of having all these data unnormalized come into play. Now if you only have a few hundred rows, do no Internet retrieval, do almost no computations and never allow (how to enforce) cascading calculations it may be amangeable. Perhaps for keeping checkbook balances.

But for something with 32,000 rows you will never know. Also, with a relational dbms, you do not sort the database when you need a different report. Sorting a spreadsheet, especially a large one, takes time, and then you must put it back in original order for the next user.

What happens if someone needs to update the spreadsheet when you have sorted it (or are in the process of sorting it)?

BTW, a .csv file is very risky if there is even the slightest possibility of their being a comma in one of the cells. I use .tsv files when required because the occurrance of tabs in a field should be much less.

-- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. V PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. ^^-^^ 10:15:00 up 59 days, 4:09, 4 users, load average: 3.30, 3.22, 3.61