General DiscussionHow was this site created?

You should probably hire some database engineer/software engineer to help you out if you're still using Excel :)

The main reasons why everything is so smooth and fast:
- Expensive hardware
- Good programmers
- A lot of time sptent maintaining/updating the site

"Excel database"

I think I found the problem

have you heard of sql, perchance?

Yep, was wondering if that is how it is done. I have MySQL and Zend installed. If learning that could help me throw together a web based database then that would be cool

Best thing to do is to export and clean your data out of excel and into access which can then, as a database be utilized on web platforms and CMS Platforms for reporting.....excel is not what you are looking for :)

still using excel O_o for real? the microsoft product? i loled
just hire a database engineer. heck, even a student could create a database for you...

Lol @ MS Excel and Access users.. i'm in data warehousing industry and deal with terabytes of data and billions of records for telco companies and this website is nowhere near that.

@Lagger there is nothing wrong with Microsoft products (actually Sql Server DB or Visual Studio support of .NET technologies are quite decent)

OT a company with 35.000 people using text editor to store data ... you are like 30 years behind in the field where every 10 years is considered as a new era

It isn't that weird that you are still using excel at your company, there are still a lot of high profile corporations that still use excel as their main "database". The transition to a scalable database system is often not worth the money if there is a system in place that works, for the same reason so many companies are still using Internet Explorer 6 as their browser. It's a very costly process ^^

Excel is one of best database program back in the old days.. and its very hard to switch excel to other sql databases so they keep excel like %70 of old companys. About this site, most likely they spent a lot of money

Excel database. =="

Even my school teaches SQL bro.

cuz its 2013 u silly :3 sql and erp got more popular after 2000 . i am sure their company is more old

Company is from the 80s or so. We have an entire reporting sector but everything trickles up from Excel. We have a team in India that does out web based reporting for the company (automates reports, but again sends us that data through Excel). It's such a small team though - have to put in requests and wait a month or so before it is processed. Too bad, not enough investment in the right places.

So I guess learning SQL is the way to go if I was interested?

SQL is for programmers. Unless you're going to develop a new piece of software for your company, don't try to learn it. Excel is no good if you need something complicated and also available to more then 1 user simultaneously, that's for sure. Try and take a look at existing ERP-systems. Maybe one of them will suit your company's needs. And if not there is always an option to hire developers who will make a software of your own for the company.