I like spreadsheets to get things done quick 'n dirty, but I feel like the threshold to where a spreadsheet becomes painful and the problem is better solved with a database (SQLite would do) and custom application is remarkably low.
Except that there's no real path for non-technical people to learn and do that, but there is on for them to become Excel power users and solve their problems with that tool.
Oh the ERP world...you get some stubborn user that refuses to learn the reporting language or SQL, and instead wants to load data dumps into Excel. Requires about ten times the hardware to do the same thing.
I agonize over this decision a lot. I normally figure the tipping point is about 8 hours of me looking into the data, or planning to revisit it 3 or more times in the future. Whichever way I choose, I normally later decide I made the wrong choice.
If it weren't for the rest of the world using spreadsheets, especially the clients we're supposed to impress, you know, the people with the $$$ that can make or break one's business, I wouldn't even bother with those spreadsheets. I'd just use Python, Numpy and Pandas for everything involving 2 dimensional data.
