Is it realistic to edit an ecommerce db with Excel?

Question

Hi,

I'm building an ecommerce website and the client insists that he'll be able to edit products with Excel spreadsheet.

It is a bit complex ecommerce website. We have

• physical product - computer
• service - computer installation
• product with variations - shirt with different sizes
• group product - a shirt and a tie.

Is it realistic to export products to one Excel spreadsheet, edit there and import back? Are there other tools to do the job?

Can you show an example for open source or commercial product that let the admin edit complex db tables with Excel?

Thanks

Answer 1

Yes it's realistic but completely impractical I really don't see how editing something in Excel can be so much better or convenient than using a well-thought and designed user interface online.

It's overkill really, I wouldn't sign up for it! :)

Answer 2

Real people - civilians - like using Excel. They use it all the time, they are familiar and productive with it, they know all the short cuts. New front ends move them out of their comfort zone. I can totally see where your client is coming from, and if they simply wanted to export sales data into Excel and generate reports, etc they would have my complete support.

But spreadsheets are very bad at handling varied data structures, relational integrity, etc. You will probably end up having to write a lot of macros and other kludges.

Partly this depends on which other products you are using. If you are deploying on a modern version of SQL Server and using SharePoint for integration Excel as a front-end would be easier to handle than Java and MySQL, or whatever. But it would still be gnarly.

The best approach is to talk seriously with your client. Find out what they are scared of and what you can do in mitigation. Also establish their absolute minimum demands: perhaps they just want to work offline and all you need to offer is a function for the bulk uploading of a CSV file.