Spreadsheets as a data source – Again !
During the course of my duties, I visit a wide array of clients and prospects. The topics generally center on data integration and delivering business value. Knowing the difficulties and traps surrounding spreadsheets as data sources, I generally recommend abandoning spreadsheets in favor of a more consistently formatted feed like a .csv file with known headings or source directly from other databases. For years, this recommendation has been very well received and produced excellent results. In the last 3 weeks, I’ve had several clients insist on spreadsheets as data sources so I’ve backed off my position and reviewed our client base and software offerings. What I’ve found is the land of unstructured data as a data source has become a reality. There are a wide variety of tools available from Informatica, Oracle and Microsoft . There is also a wealth of instruction available at TDWI, DMReview and vendor sites. Maybe spreadsheets as a data source is not such a bad idea.
Posted in Implementation Practices, In The Industry
March 13th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I have been a BI Architect and Manager for a very long time. When I started in this area, I was like you – strong opponent of using excel for BI. But, over the years, I have seen the benefits of why clients prefer Excel. The new generation of softwares have also adapted this, and their presentation layer plugs into Excel. I now architect solutions with Excel as front-end.
Giving the clients the capability to go the extra BI mile by saving the data in Excel is what it is all about. So, the ‘kosher’ data can be in a database, but the flexibility of Excel stands by itself – unparalleled.