Using Excel to Analyze MySQL Data

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 9th Jun 2006 11:07 UTC, submitted by Jane Walker

"You might be surprised to know that you can connect Excel to a database, and this isn't limited to databases running Microsoft's SQL. Excel can connect to practically any mainstream database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and others), provided that the database offers an ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) driver. In this article, you'll learn how to connect MySQL to Excel."

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Yeah!

by audun (1.4) on Fri 9th Jun 2006 11:35 UTC

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2005-07-13
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I once used excel to recover a damaged Access database.. It worked very well, and weeks of work were saved. (We had no backup)

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RE: Yeah!

by rockwell (2.12) on Fri 9th Jun 2006 14:45 UTC in reply to "Yeah!"

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2005-09-13
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// ... (We had no backup)//
bet that was the last time that happened ... right?

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Well, duh...

by RenatoRam (2.8) on Fri 9th Jun 2006 13:05 UTC

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2005-11-14
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people routinely use odbc connections from excel and access to whatever remote databases.
Most users simply use the data without even knowing it resides on an Oracle or AS400 machine, but... ODBC is not really news, is it?

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RE: Well, duh...

by jcinacio (2.08) on Fri 9th Jun 2006 13:39 UTC in reply to "Well, duh..."

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2006-03-12
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"You might be surprised to know that you can connect Excel to a database"

Actually, i'm not surprised at all.

If i'm not mistaken, you can do this since at least 97...

Edited 2006-06-09 13:40

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ehmm..

by JamesTRexx (3.28) on Fri 9th Jun 2006 15:51 UTC

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2005-11-06
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/nitpickmode on
connect MySQL to Excel
I know people using Excel like a database, but to connect MySQL to Excel seems a bit over the top.
On the other hand, if you're talking about connecting Excel to MySQL...
/nitpickmode off :-P

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Well .. theoretically

by ma_d (2.8) on Fri 9th Jun 2006 17:02 UTC

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2005-06-29
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You can do anything with Excel that you can do with any programming language ... Excel is turing equivalent...

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RE: Well .. theoretically

by Cloudy (2.68) on Sat 10th Jun 2006 05:12 UTC in reply to "Well .. theoretically"

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2006-02-15
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you wouldn't by any chance haved a turing machine implemented as an excel macro, would you.

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Surprised ? Thats simply asking for a "No" ...

by poohgee (2.48) on Fri 9th Jun 2006 21:17 UTC

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2005-08-13
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*Cough* sorry not really surprised - I guess its just a feature rarely used as its not the common office task .

:)

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Not that it matters...

by kernelpanicked (1.8) on Fri 9th Jun 2006 21:53 UTC

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2006-02-01
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...because nobody cares, but that other office suite, you know the one that doesn't suck, can do this too.

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Question in my mind....

by jbalmer (1.76) on Sat 10th Jun 2006 10:23 UTC

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2005-12-18
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The big question is if it can be done in excel, can you do it in openoffice spreadsheet as well. And if so do we still require ODBC bridge to connect to the mysql database...

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RE: Question in my mind....

by mipeligro (2.68) on Sat 10th Jun 2006 22:47 UTC in reply to "Question in my mind...."

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ODBC is a standard for how you access a database from an application. Open Office does use it to access MySQL databases.

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RE: Question in my mind....

by frankr (1) on Sun 11th Jun 2006 11:14 UTC in reply to "Question in my mind...."

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2006-06-11
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Yes, you can pull data from MySQL into OpenOffice Calc. I have done it with both the ODBC and JDBC connectors for MySQL. You want to look at the creating a data source in OO Base and then use the DataPilot features in OO Calc.

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What's new about that?

by MatzeLoCal (1.5) on Sat 10th Jun 2006 13:10 UTC

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2005-11-12
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This can be done since years..

@RenatoRam: Jup, it's possible to connect to a DB2/UDB, but it can screw it up badly. No damage or so, but the amount of allocated memory for each session is horrible.

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Well...

by Ralf. (2) on Sat 10th Jun 2006 16:30 UTC

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2005-08-13
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since Excel can only display about 65000 rows, this is only suitable for "game" database environments.

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:-S

by nealsaferstein (0.92) on Mon 12th Jun 2006 03:29 UTC

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2006-06-03
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Actually, i'm not surprised at all.

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