Any one have a problem with people looking at a databse table and thinking it is a spread sheet?

I work in a small IT dept and have developing DB's in Access for them for various thiongs. One thing I keep seing is a DB started by someone for what ever reason but they seem to think it;s a spread sheet.
Was asked "How do I do a calculation on this Table?"
Me " You don;t"
User "I'll just use excel"

Darasen

When all you've got is a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail.

I've had users write letters using Excel, and one that even managed a relatively complex spreadsheet in Word. The problem is that the users want to solve a problem, and they tend to use the tool they know that is capable of doing the job with the least effort on their part... They rarely have any religious attachment to a particular tool, they just need to get work done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

If they don't understand what a database is and what it can do for them, they'll use another tool because it appears easier to them.

-PatP

This is Corral Stuff !

Come on over and let's do some user bashing...

and btw...if they don't want to learn...good....

that is so true

all i have is sql knowledge, and every problem looks to me like a database problem!!

however, i do acknowledge that there are cases -- rare, but not totally negligible -- where it's better to use something else besides a database

still, i agree with pat, users just want to get the job done

same goes for us, no?

and besides, there is nothing wrong with looking at a table the same as a spreadsheet

it's just rows and columns, rows and columns

i always give the users this caveat -- "it's exactly like a spreadsheet, except that each cell must have something in it, no cell can have more than one thing in it, and every column must have exactly the same type of data in all cells"

Are we still talking about Excel?

And if this was Oracle, a lot of that wouldn't be true either...

Is Yukon gonna have Nested Tables as well?

i dunno... yukon ask!

(badump-tsh)