Howdy again, folks. Jeff Weir here, borrowing the keys to the blog off Chandoo again. (Hopefully I don’t scratch it again).
How remiss of me…jacob reminded me in the comments of my previous BLOATED post on good spreadsheet anti-bloat practices that I completely missed one of Excel’s newest and most efficient anti-bloat features: PowerPivot. So today’s post is going to rectify that. In less words, I promise.
Does my data look flat in this?
In Rob Collie’s excellent book DAX Formulas for PowerPivot – the Excel Pro’s Guide to Mastering DAX, Rob makes the point that before PowerPivot came along, Excel pros spent lots of their time ‘flattening’ data in order to feed their pivots. In fact, many Excel Pro’s had become Excel Pro’s largely on the back of those data flattening skills.
What does he mean by ‘flattening’? Well, PivotTables are such finicky eaters that they only like digital Pizza. That is, if you want a PivotTable to fully digest your data directly from the worksheet, then you need to lay that data out in a hierarchical structure that obfuscating geeks like to call a flat file. (You or I call a flat file a table. That’s why we’re not geeks.)
A PivotTable’s rather restrictive diet reminds me of this joke:
Question: What do you feed someone with ebola, SARS, and Swine flu?
Answer: Anything that fits under the door.
So your picky PivotTable will only eat flat, boring old Tables. In fact, it will only eat ONE table, and that table better have good labeling of all the ingredients (i.e. column headers) or your precious PivotTable will not even open it’s mouth.
Which is a problem, because the BOSS just ordered you to serve up some crazy concoction that isn’t even on your regular menu. The BOSS wants you to mix a little bit of this table with a tiny bit of that table, then add a sprinkling of some other table over the top as garnish. And the BOSS expects you to slam all this into your pre-heated PivotOven for a quick bake at 2.30GHz for no more than a few minutes, and then serve it up to the BOSS right away. Because the BOSS is hungry for data, and the BOSS is hungry NOW, DAMMIT!
So what did you do? You used as many VLOOKUPS as you have rows in your final flat data-set to join just one column of one of those additional tables onto the first table, didn’t you. And then you repeated this VLOOKUP frenzy for each and every other column that you ended up bringing into your steam-rolled mega-flat pivot-ready data-set. All of which resulted in one very bloated filesize, compared to the original footprint of the underlying tables.
And while you managed to serve up the order just in time, boy did you make a mess back in the kitchen. Formulas everywhere, and the whole joint is slowing down as a result. What’s worse, the BOSS liked the taste of what you just served up. So you’ll be working in the same messy kitchen next week to refresh it, unless you tidy up somehow.
Let’s face it…it’s such a complete mess, that you’re screwed.
Or are you?
PowerPivot….No fast data joint should be without it!
If PowerPivot was marketed on the Shopping Channel, then some obnoxiously loud voice would say something like this about it:
It slices. It dices. It joins. But wait, there’s more!
It cooks. It cleans. It washes up. It takes up practically no bench-space. But wait, there’s STILL more!
In fact there’s so much more, that that’s a subject for another post. Fortunately Chandoo already wrote it: What is Power Pivot – an Introduction. (Chandoo, that title is way too descriptive. You’ll never make Class 1 Geek unless you learn to obfuscate, my man).
Give that link a spin, because this product lives up to it’s hype. Indeed, no modern fast data joint should be without it. Emphasis on modern though, because you’ll need Excel 2010 or later in order to use this bloat-busting add-in.
But back to how it helps with bloat, the subject of this post. PowerPivot cuts through potential bloat, because it is a lot less fussy than Old-School-Pivots about what it eats:
- It allows you to create pivots on the fly from any mix of multiple data sources – Access, SQL, Excel Tables, Web Data, etc – and then effortlessly slice, dice, and navigate to your hearts content.
- You can incorporate/mash up additional data sources at any point.
- You can create very powerful calculated fields within PivotTables that simply are not possible to replicate with in traditional pivots.
- All without ship-loads of VLOOKUPS.
In fact, Rob Collie – master of both PowerPivot and understatement – has a great video showing how PowerPivot is the answer to “the dreaded VLOOKUP problem, among other things” in his post Be Gone, Scary VLOOKUP”.
So it does away with all those nasty VLOOKUPs. But that’s not the half of it…PowerPivot has some amazing data compression stuff going on under the hood too! (Check out Rob’s post Surprising Example of PowerPivot Compression for more on this.)
Okay, I’m convinced. But I’m a little scared, too…
If you want help to learn PowerPivot, then help is at hand: Check out Chandoo’s Advanced Excel & Power Pivot Training Classes. Rob Collie puts in a guest appearance in one of the modules, too. (And I think that you get a copy of his great book as part of the course fee.)
But before I return you to your regular schedule, be warned: Chandoo has the following public service message on his PowerPivot landing page that you might want to consider, if your boss is attractive as mine is:
Warning: Learning Excel and Powerpivot might suddenly make you boss fall in love with you.
Indeed, that is a good warning that I will heed, Chandoo. I’m burning Rob’s PowerPivot books as you read this.
About the Author.
Jeff Weir – a local of Galactic North up there in Windy Wellington, New Zealand – is more volatile than INDIRECT and more random than RAND. In fact, his state of mind can be pretty much summed up by this:
=NOT(EVEN(PROPER(OR(RIGHT(TODAY())))))
That’s right, pure #VALUE!
Find out more at http:www.heavydutydecisions.co.nz
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?