Recently I saw a big screaming ad that said “the chartbuster rules”. Of course, I know that chartbusters rule. Not just because I was one of them 🙂
So I got curious and read on. And I realized the ‘chartbuster’ is actually a car, not some cool, spreadsheet waving, goatee sporting dude like Jon Peltier. What a bummer!
And then to my horror of horrors, I saw the exploding 3d pie chart, with reflection effects & glossy colors. And the sole purpose of the chart is to create an impression that Verna sells better than any car in India.
First take a look at the chart:
Now for criticism
Obviously there is no denying that Verna sells better. If you look at the number of units sold, Verna’s 56,486 is better than any other numbers.
But is that the impression the chart gives?
If you just look at slicers and colors (which is what you would do), you feel that Verna has 40-45% market share.
What is the reality? It is 31.4%
Why such a distortion in our perception?!?
This is because, the ad uses a mildly evil magic called 3d pie charts, to distort what you perceive.
Then the chart maker sprinkled this 3d pie chart with assorted poisonous sprouts called as ‘customized rotation of slices’ and ‘exploding the pie for Verna, to make it look big’.
Now, the chart means one thing, but says another. Its like my wife when she wants new shoes.
Can chart rotation impact your perception – here is the proof!
Now, you might be wondering, “Oh Chandoo, come on my man. Why would I be dumb enough to fall for this.”.
So I have made a proof. I made a similar 3d pie chart from these exact numbers. Then I rotated it from 0 to 360 degrees. And you can see how the slices of pie play with your eye.
So what is a better alternative for this chart?
In this case a column chart is better. It clearly shows the leadership position of Verna without resorting to sneaky tricks.
What more, you can format the column chart so that it has all the bling! (not that I recommend such over formatting)
PS: A newer version of this ad features column chart, albeit with convoluted staircase representation.
What do you think about rotated, exploded 3d pie charts
The only time I want to rotate a pie is when it is too big and the portion I want to eat is on the other side.
What about you? do you make 3d pies? Are they tasty or sneaky (like the Verna pie)?
Share your thoughts using comments.
Take our 3d pie pledge
As a fun exercise, why don’t you take our 3d Pie pledge. Here it is.
I promise to never make a 3d pie chart. If I ever see one, I promise to not rotate or explode it. I also promise to create alternative charts (usually column, bar, line or scatter plots) so that my audience can see the truth better.
And oh yeah, I promise to bake & eat pies whenever possible. Apart from cakes, pastries, ice creams, biscuits and other assorted fun foods that is.
signed…
Go ahead and take the pledge
PS: Chartbuster series of articles & more charting principles.
41 Responses to “SQL Queries from Excel”
I use this method very often.
I always use =SUBSTITUTE (ColumnWithText,"'","''")
to be sure that potential apostrophe in text columns are doubled as required in SQL.
Awesome ! I don't use excel very often so the substitute thing is gold to me 🙂 thanks !
@Leonid.. that is a good technique to use substitute to clean up text apostrophes. thanks
Goal:
Generate update statement in excel where the columns that can be updated are dynamic
You want the columns which are not updated to keep the same value
(or not be overwritten with NULL values with the new generated statement)
the statement can be applied to multiple rows in excel for the same column headers
(This is why the '$' exist for the column headers that are being set)
A1 = First_Name
B1 = Last_Name
C1 = Middle_Name
="
UPDATE PERSONS "&CHAR(10)&
" SET 1 = 1 "&CHAR(10)&
IF(LEN(TRIM($A2))=0,"",", "&$A$1&" = '"&$A2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($B2))=0,"",", "&$B$1&" = '"&$B2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($C2))=0,"",", "&$C$1&" = '"&$C2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
" WHERE name = 'staticordynamicvalue' AND gender = 'staticordynamicvalue'
"
Output (if all columns are set):
UPDATE PERSONS SET 1 = 1,
First_Name = 'Joe',
Last_Name = 'ORien',
Middle_Name = 'Richard'
WHERE age = 28 AND gender = 'm'
Output (if only First _Name (A1) is set):
UPDATE PERSONS SET 1 = 1,
First_Name = 'Joe'
WHERE age = 28 AND gender = 'm'
Possibly my post above is confusing without the actual table to look at. I will do the same example with the table used here. Instead of an insert statement I will generate an update statement for the columns, Cust_Name, Phone & E-mail
where we can generate an update statement for any column individually or together. 🙂 I hope this can help.
=”
UPDATE table “&CHAR(10)&
” SET 1 = 1 “&CHAR(10)&
IF(LEN(TRIM($A2))=0,”",”,Cust_Name = ‘”&$B3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($B2))=0,”",”, Phone = ‘”&$C3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($C2))=0,”",”, E-mail = ‘”&$D3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
” WHERE Cust_Name = ’Bill Gates'
”
Thanks, it has been very useful !
It saved me at least 30 minutes, and time is the most expensive thing in our world...
Hey Paul,
What if any of A2, B2, or C2 is a date field?
The formula above is taking date as string. Any solution?
Even I faced the same problem. If any of the above columns are date, it is taken as string. Any work around for this?
I've found the string concatenation method works well.
At the risk of sounding spammy I would mention that
if it's something your are doing regularly it might be worth investigating a tools
that make it easier, such as QueryCell, an excel add-in I've developed.
It gives you a right click menu option that will produce and then customize insert statements for the selected region of Excel data.
Cheers
Sam
Hi,
For inserting the excel data to your SQL table, you can create insert statements in excel file according to your columns.
then just execute the statements all at once, it will insert the required data to sql server table.
thanks,
How...?
I tried to generate t-sql insert queries from the above example
="insert into values('" &A2 &"','" & B2& "');"
but it generates on one record instead of all records from excel sheet.
I'm using Excel 2003 and the excel sheet contains 922 records.
Most data bases can generate DDL for any object but not a lot of them allow generation of INSERT statements for the table data.
The workaround is to make use of ETL Tools for transferring data across servers. However, there exists a need to generate INSERT statements from the tables for porting data.
Simplest example is when small or large amount of data needs to be taken out on a removable storage media and copied to a remote location, INSERT..VALUES statements come handy.
There is a number of scripts available to perform this data transformation task. The problem with those scripts that all of them database specific and they do not work with textiles
Advanced ETL processor can generate Insert scripts from any data source including text files
http://www.dbsoftlab.com/generating-insert-statements.html
Super Aiticle. Thanks for this post.
I used to deal with the same problem, until found this awsome and free tool.
http://www.xtrategics.com/shapp/String%20Handler.application
regards,
Hi ,
i need a sql query to update a DB in excel 2010..
i have the query(SQL) for insert in excel as ,
="insert into customers values('" &B3 &"','" & C3 & "','"&D3&"');"
similarly i need q sql query for update in excel
i want clear formulas only for insert,delete,update,select
Hi !
I would like to thank you so much ! This trick saves me a lot of time. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it !
-Ankit
You may like to take advantage of this unique tool 'Excel to Database'.
(free for 60 days)http://leansoftware.net The Excel-to-Database utility enables you to validate and transfer data from Microsoft Excel or text file to a database table or stored procedure process. Any text data can be pasted into the application, this may be from another Excel sheet or from text files such as CSV format. SQL Server, Access, MySQL, FoxPro .. Application features Some unique features of Excel to Database include: ?Easy to use color coded/traffic light data validation ?Data is validated as soon it is typed or pasted into Excel ?Upload Excel data to a table or stored procedure process ?Allow default values ?Mandatory/must have fields can be specified ?Allow user friendly column names ?Allow excel formula / calculated fields ?Multiple database type support: Microsoft SQL Server, Access, MySQL and others (to be tested) ?Supports Custom SQL scripts, with SQL/Excel merge fields ?Database validation checks ensure you comply with any rules defined within the database ?Multiple Task configuration ?For co-operative use, Tasks can be shared across a network ?Task configuration is password protected http://leansoftware.net
Its works fine for single record.
I want to update 1000 records in DB. Can you help me.
[...] [...]
Excel database tasks 2.3 (EDT)
you can now load directly from any source into Excel, validate and upload to most SQL database platforms including SQL Server with automatic transaction wrapping.
You can also use EDT as a multi-user application by easily designing your own Edit data tasks and deploying EDT on your users workstations.
Automatically creates UPDATE/INSERT statements based on the primary key. Default SQL can be modified as you require.
Makes the best use if Excel power - formatting, formula, validation, conditional formatting.. without creating any problematic spreadsheets!
Release details on the blog:
http://leansoftware.net/forum/en-us/blog.aspx
Thanks for the interest
Richard
Thanks for the valueable information, it really help me alot.
Thanks again.
As I do with a field of type date?
= "UPDATE SET business datetime =" & "'" & A2 & "' WHERE ID =" & B2 & ""
the date is not 03/10/2012 is 41246. Even putting quotes ...
Please show how to do it properly with dates as well as when those dates are empty. Thanks!
In a separate column make the date to Text using below formula
=TEXT(C2,"mm/dd/yyyy") Then Refer this text column in your update statement
Great post saved me a a load of time on a task i had to complete
thanks for sharing article... helpful!
Thanks 🙂
Hello,
Nice article.
I have also created one tool for create table script using excel http://devssolution.com/create-table-in-sql-using-excel/
Please check it.
Thanks & Regards,
Sandeep Bhadauriya
[…] Excel formula used – http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/09/22/sql-insert-update-statements-from-csv-files/ […]
If any one can help me out with following.
I want to know a SQL query of below excel formula:
=LOOKUP(0,-SEARCH(LEFT(F2,LEN($B$2:$B$100))+0,$B$2:$B$100),$A$2:$A$100)
Excel data is as below;
Name Codes
names1 992
names2 57
names3 856
names4 297
names5 63
if there is a number (29756789) then it should search in sql by taking the prefix of number (297) from (29756789) and return the name field (name4).
Codes can be of two digit or three.
Thanks
Here is a link to an Online automator to convert CSV files to SQL Insert Into statements:
CSV-to-SQL: http://csv-to-sql.herokuapp.com
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1570387/how-to-insert-data-from-an-excel-sheet-into-a-database-table/37409790#37409790
="INSERT INTO table VALUES (" &A3 &",'" & B3 & "','"&C3&"','" & D3 & "','" & E3 & "'," & F3 & "," & G3 & "," & H3 & ",'" & I3 & "'," & J3 & ");"
B3 has date data that looks like 9/22/17 but with the formula above b3 is coming out as 43000?
how do i fix that?
I just want to insert the Excel records in Sql table without Visiting SQL.
basically i m just want to run a command in Excel Only.
Help Me..plz..?
Hi I have a question maybe you guys have an answer for me
="insert into customers values('" &B3 &"','" & C3 & "','"&D3&"');" where B3, C3, D3 refer to above table data.
the above technique works but is there a way to write it so it takes a range instead of individual columns. because I have an extremely wide table
="insert into customers values(B3:D3);" where B3, C3, D3 refer to above table data.
Awsome
Its Great Effort to help everyone who working with excel.
Thanks for the mini-tutorial on SQL from Excel. Didi it several years ago, but couldn't remember the syntax! All the dialogue was really helpful as well!
The formula above is taking date as string. Any solution?