
Ask PG: Is this what you meant by "web-based Excel/database hybrid"? - sheetjs
http://sheetjs.com/websql/
======
pg
As far as I can tell from a quick look, this isn't what I had in mind. I'd
expect to see a grid I could start typing into, not a page of text.

I was thinking of something for ordinary end users. So anything that tells
users "This particular parser assumes that the first row of every table is a
header row" is ipso facto not what I had in mind, because ordinary end users
don't know what a parser is. Or a header row for that matter.

~~~
sheetjs
While you are here: you've funded a few startups in the space, including
skysheet ([http://www.skysheet.com/](http://www.skysheet.com/)) and fivetran
([http://fivetran.com/](http://fivetran.com/)). Are they targeting this
"hybrid" or are you thinking of something completely different?

~~~
pg
Neither of them are. Grid
([http://www.binarythumb.com](http://www.binarythumb.com)) is the closest
thing to it.

------
jellicle
I don't know what pg meant, but I know what I'm still looking for: Microsoft
Access, available in a cross-platform online way.

And no, things like Openoffice^W Libreoffice Base or Kexi are about 1,000,000
miles away from even being useable, much less good.

~~~
eterm
Despite the fact I've long moved on from MS Access, I know exactly what you
mean. There needs to be an application that anyone can open up and start doing
database stuff with, that is cross platform but accessible to both end users
who want to explore through clicks (query builders) but also those who want
the power to script it (SQL and VBA).

Access really delivered on that count. If it wasn't for the two factors of
relatively poor performance (terrible performance when run "across" a network
_) and lack of cross-platform behaviour, it would be my go-to tool.

I think there really is demand for a cross platform database gui that sits on
top of a serverless database file. If this file can be uploaded to a website
that also enables excel-like data manipulation and then downloaded/shared back
as a file for manipulation by this gui tool then even better.

If this tool is powerful enough to realise that it shouldn't try to execute
across a network and somehow flip over to a "remote execution" mode where it
targets a server rather than a file, then even better.

That's the dream, nothing has ever come close.

_Opening an MDB across a network share. Opening large databases for long
running simulations was par for the course at a company where I previously
worked. One of the first things I did was make sure files were on a local
drive before simulating which turned a 6 hour run into a minute long run.

~~~
notastartup
I've never used MS Access before. What is the difference between it and
PHPMyAdmin or HeidiSQL?

What specific things made MS Access so easy to pickup and what made it
powerful?

For anyone else that is looking for what was described above, I'd be pretty
happy to work on something new for a change.

If you can please provide me some details (my email is in my profile), that
would keep me motivated. My only gap in knowledge is MS Access and what it did
well and what it didn't do well.

~~~
eterm
I've not used either of those tools, but here's some stuff that access does
that I often find lacking in other tools:

1) You can copy a grid from excel, do a "paste as data" and access will
automagically create a table, with the right data types and even pick up
column names if headers are present.

2) You can view a table as a grid, similar to excel, and just start typing
away to create data. You can do this before you even create the table to just
start creating a table.

3) The drag / drop query builder is extremely easy, especially for things like
cross tab queries. You can click "view as SQL" to then turn it into SQL if you
want to tweak stuff. (I actually learned SQL this way)

4) foreign keys are made through a drag-drop interface "relationships"

5) The form wizard makes making forms really easy.

6) You can right click a row and delete the row. You can right click a column
and delete the column. Any error messages are typically understandable and not
cryptic.

7) All your data is in a file. A file which you know where it is, and you know
you can click that file to open and see your tables and forms.

8) You can save queries which act almost like views / CTEs and in most queries
you get a grid which you can just start editing data in if you so wish.

If anyone is unfamiliar with access I'd strongly recommending getting hold of
a copy to play around with, it's how to do database right for end-users.

~~~
ams6110
I never found the GUI query tools to be particulary intuitive once you moved
beyond single-table queries. GUI or no, you still need to understand basic
relational database concepts to be able to set up multi-table joins in queries
that actually produce the results you want.

~~~
eterm
In access an expert can set up relationships which will cause them to be
automatically joined when a less expert user adds both tables to a query.

Some knowledge is usually required to make sense of the results though but I'd
say a non-expert still has more chance with access than any other tool.

------
waterside81
The idea of a "modern" Excel/Access is intriguing, but it's not without it's
pitfalls. Basically, who uses Excel/Access a lot? Big Corporate America. Can
they put their data up anywhere and access it over the web? In some cases,
yes, in most cases I've seen, no. So any solution, to really make a dent, has
to be usable as a self-hosted app. No quant at a trading desk is going to
willy-nilly upload their proprietary models to a startup running on EC2.

We encountered this push back with our software so we had to write an Excel
add-in (code-signed, of course) for our corporate customers so they could use
our software locally on their data sets without having to leave the comfy
confines of their corporate firewall.

With all that said, I'm sure there is some segment of the population who don't
mind their data up in the cloud if the UI on top comes close to Access. You
just gotta find that segment.

~~~
qq66
What's your product called?

~~~
waterside81
[https://www.repustate.com/sentiment-analysis-excel-
plugin/](https://www.repustate.com/sentiment-analysis-excel-plugin/)

~~~
notastartup
whoa that is seriously awesome tool! how do you build such excel plugins? have
you also thought about listing it on the microsoft office store?

------
cdcarter
Unlikely. This still requires you to create all your data offline. Likely what
pg is referring to (because I know I and many others wish they had it) is an
easy to use browser based MS Access replacement that actually works, and also
can quickly report out to a web-based MS Excel replacement so that you can
build formulas they way you're used to, not learn SQL. Something like
DabbleDB.

------
svmegatron
I'll be the Pollyanna here and say: maybe! Probably not this iteration, but
maybe!

Features I'd suggest: * Some explanation, in a big font, of what we are seeing
on the homepage of sheetjs.com ("SheetJS lets you get more information out of
your data, instantly") * A big button that takes me to a sample sheet, with
some sample queries I can run. Basically, a live tutorial

Good luck, this looks cool!

------
zefi
Fivetran is probably the closest to it. They're also YC (W13) which makes
sense. [https://www.fivetran.com/](https://www.fivetran.com/)

------
dfc
_Tiling window manager users:_ What do you do when you see "drop a file here"?
I usually just move on but I wanted to try this. I am staring at awesome right
now trying to think-of/find a graphical file manager that does not have a
thousand dependencies.

~~~
mintplant
I split my screen between `nautilus` and `firefox` and drop the file from one
to the other. What aspect particular to tiling window managers gives you
difficulty?

~~~
dfc
Awesome/Xmonad/i3 do not come with a GUI file manager (for obvious reasons). I
don't have gnome/kde/xfce installed and point and click file management is not
going to be the straw that broke the camels back. The only thing that comes
close is rkward, but it relies on kde-base which is the most obese of the
three big environments.

------
ealexhudson
I think he probably meant something closer to DabbleDB, which shut down a
couple of years ago :( Still a great idea.

~~~
j45
Dabble DB was amazing. I only discovered it a week before it was aqui-
shutdown.

Edit: I'm trying to access the demo video on archive.org and was able to get
into the help area for anyone interested in the details of how it worked:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20090430200143/http://dabbledb.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20090430200143/http://dabbledb.com/help/index)

~~~
rpedela
Here is a video on Youtube. I don't know if it is the one you were looking
for.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCVj5RZOqwY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCVj5RZOqwY)

------
TheBigOh
This is slightly off the mark as you can't edit data with this tool, but this
past year I worked on building a tool for manipulating data from an rdbms in
the browser using only clicks. It was an effort to get beyond traditional
enterprise reporting frameworks, but more importantly it was my "learn Clojure
by building something kinda useful" project. I have it hosted on Heroku here:
[http://efreportsdemo.herokuapp.com/](http://efreportsdemo.herokuapp.com/)

Since I mostly use this project for resume fodder, it only uses one dyno and
could probably stand to be a bit more secure (my postgres db should probably
be a "follower"). Tangentially, it really wouldn't be very difficult to get
this to support multiple datasources - some even csv file based.

------
taylorbuley
I'm a huge proponent of IndexedDB, so I groan every time I see a new app
developed using WebSQL. From the WebSQL spec:

> Beware. This specification is no longer in active maintenance and the Web
> Applications Working Group does not intend to maintain it further.

WebSQL isn't going anywhere, and it's the only good client-side database on
iOS, but without IE support and a spec-based future I'm not sure why folks
continue to put good development time into this API.

~~~
sheetjs
There is a version using SQLite (compiled to JS using emscripten):
[http://sheetjs.com/sexql/sqljs.html](http://sheetjs.com/sexql/sqljs.html)

However, the source is about 2MB, so I thought it was preferable to use WebSQL
on iPhone (and fall back to SQL.js when necessary)

------
SushiMon
You mean something like www.silk.co? Full disclosure - I work there. It turns
CSVs into a web-based CSV/DB hybrid. Row = page. Column header = key. Column
content = value. Collection = Worksheet. You can link worksheets and pivot the
views. Also has basic visualizations - pie, line, bar, table, grid maps.

------
catshirt
surely not? this is like google docs with no design or features.

~~~
hencq
And note that Google Sheets actually has a query() function that allows you to
run SQL like queries on your datasets. Few people seem to know this, but for
me it's one of the features where I prefer it to Excel.

~~~
yahelc
I didn't, that's really useful!

Sharing the documentation links for the benefit of others, since it's not
easily found:

Documentation for the query() function:
[https://support.google.com/drive/answer/3093343](https://support.google.com/drive/answer/3093343)

Query Language Reference:
[https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/queryla...](https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/querylanguage)

------
pbreit
I was always wondering if FileMaker could find some sort of role like this (if
it's even still alive)?

~~~
desigooner
It's still very much alive. IIRC, a lot of universities / K-12 schools and non
profits use FileMaker in some manner. I've supported a high number of users in
the past and non-technical people surprisingly adapted well managing to be
productive with it. The iPhone + iPad apps were decently usable upon launch
and hopefully they've gotten better over the last couple of years. I prefer FM
over Access and even Excel as far as small tasks like data matching / cleanup
/ etc. are concerned where a development effort isn't warranted.

------
rogerbinns
Why can't I use a csv file?

The thing that is most valuable for exploring data for us is pivot tables.
Both Excel and LibreOffice are single threaded and take forever once you have
a few hundred thousand rows.

~~~
luckydata
you should add yourself to the list at www.datapad.io and then get in touch on
twitter using @luckymethod

------
dllthomas
I want a vim/excel/database (and sed/excel/database) hybrid more than I want a
web based one. I've no trouble accepting that I'm weird, though...

------
pkh80
I think what you want is something like Microsoft Access on the web, only less
crappy. I think its been tried many times and never done quite right.

------
iandanforth
I think this is a really cool tool! I'd love to be able to select columns/rows
in the results so I can copy/paste them elsewhere.

------
ams6110
So I can use this to work with an Excel file that I already have on my
computer. Why would I not just open that file _in_ Excel?

------
spullara
SmartSheet is pretty much an excel/database hybrid and is pretty popular.

------
executive
doubtful, the site is pathetically slow.

~~~
sheetjs
I'm glad the site is still up.

The last demo was hosted on Github:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6722197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6722197)
[https://github.com/SheetJS/sheetjs.github.io](https://github.com/SheetJS/sheetjs.github.io)

... and we managed to kill github pages:
[https://status.github.com/messages/2013-11-13](https://status.github.com/messages/2013-11-13)

So I'm very happy that the hosting hasn't died yet

------
notastartup
what was the original statement made by PG?

so if anyone can help me understand what PG meant and what it is that people
would like to see with the "modern" Access/Excel version, I might be able to
create a quick prototype and get your feedbacks. Please email me and I'd love
to send you an alpha version.

Basically, I'm missing what MS Access was like as I've never encountered it in
my career path as a developer. If I could learn what made MS Access so lovable
(or unlikable) as a pillar to shape the prototype from what I understand will
need cross-platform, local, optional cloud upload (I totally get that you
wouldn't want to upload your company's sensitive spreadsheet), and some of the
basic functionality of a database management tool that are commonly used.

~~~
byoung2
[http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html](http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html)

 _22\. A web-based Excel /database hybrid. People often use Excel as a
lightweight database. I suspect there's an opportunity to create the program
such users wish existed, and that there are new things you could do if it were
web-based. Like make it easier to get data into it, through forms or scraping.

Don't make it feel like a database. That frightens people. The question to ask
is: how much can I let people do without defining structure? You want the
database equivalent of a language that makes its easy to keep data in linked
lists. (Which means you probably want to write it in one.)_

