By Hiran de Silva
I have just seen a post from Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn suggesting that Excel is acquiring more and more database-like functionality.
And therefore, the argument seems to go, Excel is becoming more like a database.
I think this is profoundly wrong.
Not because the new Excel functionality isn’t impressive. Some of it is extraordinary.
It is wrong because it confuses what happens inside a spreadsheet with what a database does for spreadsheets in the real world.
And that distinction goes right to the heart of The Miracle of Excel.
A Car Has Wheels. A Wheelbarrow Has Wheels.
Let me start with a simple piece of logic.
A motor car has wheels.
A wheelbarrow has wheels.
Therefore, a wheelbarrow is becoming a motor car.
Obviously ridiculous.
Giving Excel features that resemble things we associate with databases does not turn Excel into a relational database.
More importantly, it does not replace the reason that professional spreadsheet systems use relational databases in the first place.
That is the misconception I want to challenge.
Because it reveals something much bigger about the way Excel is discussed and taught.
The Latest Exciting Thing Inside Excel
Microsoft continues to introduce remarkable capabilities into Excel.
Dynamic arrays changed what can happen inside a formula.
Power Query transformed how users can acquire and reshape data.
Power Pivot brought sophisticated analytical modelling into Excel.
LAMBDA allows users to create reusable calculation logic.
And Microsoft’s continuing work with richer data structures potentially allows increasingly complex objects and relationships to exist within the spreadsheet itself.
Excellent.
But none of that answers the question I am interested in.
Where does the spreadsheet sit within the business process?
That is a completely different question.
And it is the question that much of Excel social media hardly ever asks.
Welcome to the Car Showroom
Let me explain with an intentionally ridiculous analogy.
Imagine you want to become a motorist.
You go into a car showroom.
The salesman proudly shows you the latest model.
Look at the steering wheel.
Look at the heated seats.
Look at the electric windows.
Look at the entertainment system.
Look at the wonderful new controls.
And then he shows you the satellite navigation system.
This is amazing.
You type in a postcode.
A line appears on the screen showing you how to get there.
You type in another postcode.
Another line appears.
Wow!
You can spend hours sitting in that car pressing buttons and exploring its extraordinary capabilities.
But you haven’t travelled anywhere.
You are still sitting in the showroom.
The Plastic Screen Is Not the Real World
There is a rather important difference between watching a line travel across a satnav screen and actually driving from London to Edinburgh.
Out on the road there are other motorists.
There are pedestrians.
There are traffic lights.
There are roadworks.
There are diversions.
There are speed limits.
There are junctions.
There are rules.
There are other people whose actions affect yours.
You need to interact with an entire external environment.
That is motoring.
And the equivalent distinction exists with spreadsheets.
Business does not happen inside a workbook.
Business happens outside the workbook.
The spreadsheet participates in it.
That distinction is absolutely fundamental.
The Great Excel Car Park
Much of Excel social media, in my view, teaches people how to become extraordinarily accomplished drivers in a private car park.
Here is a fantastic formula.
Here is an amazing LAMBDA.
Here is a clever Power Query transformation.
Here is a dynamic array trick.
Here is a new data type.
Here is something astonishing you can now put inside a cell.
Wonderful.
I am not mocking those capabilities.
I use many of them.
I am challenging the boundary of the thinking.
Because outside that workbook is an organisation.
There might be ten people.
There might be 100 people.
There might be 10,000 people.
There are processes.
There are permissions.
There are transactions.
There are simultaneous users.
There are audit requirements.
There are systems of record.
There are data that must be PUT somewhere.
There are data that must be GET by somebody else.
There are people in different departments, different buildings and different countries who must participate in the same business process.
Suddenly the important question isn’t:
What clever thing can Excel now do inside a cell?
It is:
How does this spreadsheet participate safely, efficiently and collaboratively in the organisation?
Welcome to the public highway.
And THAT Is Where the Relational Database Enters the Story
This is the part of Excel education that I believe has been neglected for decades.
The relational database isn’t competing with Excel.
It isn’t something that Excel needs eventually to become.
It is Excel’s partner.
I call it the Digital Librarian.
Excel is the working document.
The relational database is the structured central repository through which those working documents communicate.
Instead of having information scattered across hundreds of isolated spreadsheets, the spreadsheets can GET the information they require from the Librarian and PUT information back.
The database provides the shared structured layer.
Excel provides the user-facing working environment.
Put the two together and something remarkable happens.
Excel becomes global.
Tim and Reg
This is exactly the distinction I have been illustrating with Tim and Reg.
Tim is extremely good at Excel.
He follows excellent Excel educators.
He learns Power Query.
He learns formulas.
He automates his work.
He becomes increasingly efficient at performing the task he has been given.
Then Reg arrives.
Reg asks a completely different question.
Why does this task exist?
Instead of making Tim’s existing process faster, Reg re-engineers the process.
And one of the technologies that allows him to do that is something almost completely absent from mainstream Excel education:
a relational database.
The database isn’t replacing Excel.
The database is extending Excel beyond the boundary of the workbook.
That is the breakthrough.
Excel Has Been Able to Do This for Decades
And here is the part I find particularly frustrating.
This isn’t some futuristic idea.
Excel has been capable of working with relational databases for decades.
Microsoft gave us the plumbing.
Excel can communicate with Access.
Excel can communicate with SQL Server.
Excel can execute queries.
Excel can execute stored procedures.
Excel can retrieve records.
Excel can write records.
A spreadsheet can become a client to a central relational database.
Once you understand that, you stop asking:
How can I squeeze more database-like functionality inside my workbook?
And start asking:
Why am I storing all this shared business data inside the workbook at all?
That is a much more interesting question.
The Parent-Child Relationship Isn’t the Revolution
Consider the excitement around increasingly rich structures within Excel.
Take a parent-child relationship.
An account and its transactions.
A customer and its orders.
A shop and its sales.
A product and its stock movements.
These aren’t revolutionary business concepts.
Relational databases have been managing relationships like these forever.
And when Excel sits on top of a relational database, those relationships aren’t confined to one person’s workbook.
They can exist across the organisation.
A manager can select a country.
GET the countries beneath a region.
Select a city.
GET the shops.
Select a shop.
GET its transactions.
Drill down.
Drill back up.
Change something.
PUT it back.
Audit who changed it and when.
Now we aren’t playing with an interesting structure inside a spreadsheet.
We are operating a business process.
That is the difference.
Power Query Doesn’t Make This Distinction Disappear Either
Power Query is brilliant.
But consider what its name tells us.
Extract. Transform. Load.
Where are you loading the data?
Frequently, into the Excel environment for subsequent analysis.
That can be extremely useful.
But it doesn’t somehow abolish the architectural role of a database.
Retrieving and transforming information is not the same problem as maintaining a shared transactional system of record through which many spreadsheet users participate in a process.
They are different jobs.
Confusing them is another version of staring at the satnav screen and forgetting there is a road outside.
So I Have a Question for Paul
And this is the question I put to Paul Barnhurst.
Not theoretically.
Not philosophically.
Practically.
What have you personally done professionally with relational databases working alongside Excel?
Show me the business process.
Show me what the database was doing.
Show me what Excel was doing.
Show me the users.
Show me the workflow.
Show me the GET.
Show me the PUT.
Show me the audit trail.
Show me the collaboration.
Show me the scale.
Then show me which new Excel feature has made that database unnecessary.
That would be a fascinating discussion.
Because until we compare those two things, saying that Excel is becoming a database because it has acquired increasingly database-like features tells us almost nothing about the problem databases actually solve in enterprise spreadsheet systems.
We Have Been Looking in the Wrong Direction
This is why The Miracle of Excel matters to me.
For years we have been taught to stare ever more intently into the workbook.
More functions.
More features.
More transformations.
More modelling.
More cleverness.
And the cleverness is genuine.
But turn your head ninety degrees.
Look outside the workbook.
Look at the business.
Look at the other people.
Look at the process.
Look at where the data comes from.
Look at where it needs to go.
Look at who needs it next.
Look at who is allowed to change it.
Look at how we know who changed it.
Look at how 100 spreadsheets can work together instead of becoming 100 separate islands.
And suddenly the relational database becomes extraordinarily important.
Not instead of Excel.
With Excel.
Stop Trying to Turn Excel Into the Librarian
Excel is a magnificent working document.
Let it be one.
A relational database is a magnificent structured repository.
Let it be one.
The accountant doesn’t become a librarian because somebody gives the accountant a bigger filing cabinet.
And Excel doesn’t become a relational database because Microsoft puts increasingly sophisticated data structures inside it.
The miracle isn’t that Excel is becoming a database.
The miracle is that Excel never needed to become one.
Microsoft gave Excel the ability to work with relational databases decades ago.
The tragedy is that an enormous part of the Excel world appears never to have been taught what that makes possible.
So while everybody is admiring the latest satnav…
I am suggesting something rather more ambitious.
Start the engine.
Leave the car park.
There is a whole world outside the workbook.
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