Wonderful as the venues in Exeter and Cardiff were, they found it hard to compete with giving a lecture in a room that looked out over the Gloucester County Cricket Club ground on a wonderfully sunny and warm May day. It’s a tribute to the allure of Excel (or maybe to the politeness of accountants!) that, in spite of refreshment breaks being held on the verandah overlooking a 2nd eleven match in progress, everyone returned for the rest of the course. Some of the more vociferous appeals provided an interesting, and rather less intrusive, punctuation than the Leeds pneumatic drill. The combination of Excel and cricket makes it hard for me to resist including a link to a post on my own blog that uses the Excel logical functions to apply the LBW (leg before wicket) rule.
One of the issues that came out of the South West section of the roadshow was that of database skills. Like the use of templates discussed in the last episode, few delegates on any of the roadshows admitted to any expertise in the use of relational databases. For many users, there may be no need to know much about the underlying details of how the data they work with is structured. If the application controlling the data packages it in a way that makes accurate, understandable data available reliably, then database skills may not be necessary. Where applications are not so generous, or where there is a need to work with data from more than one source, or maybe add extra information to existing data, then the ability to work confidently with relational data could be very beneficial.
However, databases – even Microsoft’s desktop database ‘Access’ that comes as part of Office Professional – can be much more difficult to get to grips with than a word processor or a spreadsheet. Unlike either of the other two, databases have an inherent structure that you need some understanding of in order to get very far. This, together with the lack of a single familiar ‘document’ to start working on, leads many users to write databases off as too technical and not suitable for end users. Indeed, understanding all the nuances of database structure and database application design is very far from straightforward. On the other hand, an elementary understanding of how databases work may allow a user to perform simple database tasks with a great deal less effort than working with some of Excel’s Lookup, Reference and Database functions. Even if you don’t want to get your own hands dirty, an appreciation of what might be achieved can give you the information you need to approach someone with the required database skills to create the data source you want to work with.
This was a point emphasised by one of the attendees in Cardiff. They had called on their software supplier to create the data extract from the software that they wanted to use in Excel. Because the supplier not only had the required skills, but also obviously understood the structure of their own application’s data, they were able to provide a far more cost effective solution than battling with unfamiliar data and skills in-house. So, don’t be afraid of databases, but do recognise that once you’ve worked out what you want, you may find your best option is to hire a professional to get it for you.