From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2000 - 10:11:34 MDT
Emlyn O'Regan wrote:
>
> Geez Spike, what is it with excel & engineers? Some years back I used to
> work in a company with lots of engineers, supporting small systems.
> Engineers, I discovered, love excel. At some point, the really keen ones
> discover Excel macros, and build systems, which grow until they become both
> mission critical and entirely broken. That was a, ah, challenging job.
snip
>
> Truly Spike, I say unto ye, venture into the world of MSAccess. You'll be
> surprised; contrary to the hype, it's actually a really useful tool for
> storing/manipulating large amounts of data. Just don't try to build
> multiuser systems out of it.
Access is great for manipulating lots of static data. Excel is for an entirely
different purpose. The worksheet is a matrix to build up highly complex
calculations step by step to generate NEW data. Based on a few variables, one
can run simulations of very complex systems. You can create a 'control panel'
that displays real time graphs and readouts and controls that allow you to
virtually 'run' a machine in simulation, based entirely on the calculations in
the worksheet that calculate all the forces and inputs that come into play. This
is something that Access cannot do, unless it is being used to run an Excel
worksheet.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:30:56 MST