Yesterday was Halloween. To our readers who are not familiar with it, ‘Halloween is a colorful festival with lots of costumes, scary stories, theme parties and trick-or-treating, celebrated on 31st October, every year.” I have never celebrated Halloween as it is an unknown tradition in India where I live. But that is no excuse. Especially when the celebration calls for colorful clothes, scary themed houses and shrieking kids.
Of course, we are not going to have a traditional Halloween. Because,
- At our house, we use pumpkins to make sambar, not lights
- The only ones with costumes in our house are my kids.
- If I send my kids for trick or treat, they will get neither.
So that brings us to the only part of Halloween that I can celebrate. Telling scary stories.
So lets talk about the stuff that scares us. But bear in mind that I am not interested in that time when you & your cousin went camping and stumbled in to an abandoned log cabin to discover the …Save it for real Halloween.
We want to talk stuff that scares you in Excel of course.
I will go first, Things in Excel that scare me most
- Solver. Although I have used it several times, every time I set up a solver model, I feel uncomfortable. I am not sure if it will give the results I am looking for or something else altogether.
- Broken connections. More than scare, I just feel annoyed when I see these. This is also why I am very skeptical to copy entire worksheets or big ranges between files.
- Array formula usage of FREQUENCY(), N(), MMULT() and TRANSPOSE(): In most of our formula challenge & formula forensic posts, I see a lot of people using these formulas. Most of the times when I try to decode what is happening I feel lost. They are really scary!
- Statistical analysis: This is something I have been fearing since college days. I know good deal about basic probability and statistics. But when it comes to advanced stuff, I always fumble. Good thing I don’t have to use these techniques very often.
Hopefully, I will grow my skills in next year to fear less.
What about you? What areas of Excel scare you most?
Go ahead and tell us your Excel scary stories. What are you afraid of? What makes you snicker? Which Excel features make you feel vulnerable? Go ahead and tell us. Post your stories in comments.
PS: You can also tell us the scary thing that happened to your Excel workbooks or analysis.
PPS: Or about the time you were alone at home and you heard a rustling noise in the closet, only to realize it was a nasty, long and confusing SUMPRODUCT.
One Response to “SQL vs. Power Query – The Ultimate Comparison”
Enjoyed your SQL / Power Query podcast (A LOT). I've used SQL a little longer than Chandoo. Power Query not so much.
Today I still use SQL & VBA for my "go to" applications. While I don't pull billions of rows, I do pull millions. I agree with Chandoo about Power Query (PQ) lack of performance. I've tried to benchmark PQ to SQL and I find that a well written SQL will work much faster. Like mentioned in the podcast, my similar conclusion is that SQL is doing the filtering on the server while PQ is pulling data into the local computer and then filtering the data. I've heard about PQ query folding but I still prefer SQL.
My typical excel application will use SQL to pull data from an Enterprise DB. I load data into Structured Tables and/or Excel Power Pivot (especially if there's lot of data).
I like to have a Control Worksheet to enter parameters, display error messages and have user buttons to execute VBA. I use VBA to build/edit parameters used in the SQL. Sometimes I use parameter-based SQL. Sometimes I create a custom SQL String in a hidden worksheet that I then pull into VBA code (these may build a string of comma separated values that's used with a SQL include). Another SQL trick I like to do is tag my data with a YY-MM, YY-QTR, or YY-Week field constructed form a Transaction Date.
In an application, I like to create a dashboard(s) that may contain hyperlinks that allow the end-user to drill into data. Sometimes the hyperlink will point to worksheet and sometimes to a supporting workbook. In some cases, I use a double click VBA Macro that will pull additional data and direct the user to a supplemental worksheet or pivot table.
In recent years I like Dynamic Formulas & Lambda Functions. I find this preferable to pivot tales and slicers. I like to use a Lambda in conjunction with a cube formula to pull data from a power pivot data model. I.E. a Lambda using a cube formula to aggregate Accounting Data by a general ledger account and financial period. Rather than present info in a power pivot table, you can use this combination to easily build financial reports in a format that's familiar to Accounting Professionals.
One thing that PQ does very well is consolidating data from separate files. In the old days this was always a pain.
I've found that using SQL can be very trying (even for someone with experience). It's largely an iterative process. Start simple then use Xlookup (old days Match/Index). Once you get the relationships correct you can then use SQL joins to construct a well behaved SQL statement.
Most professional enterprise systems offer a schema that's very valuable for constructing SQL statements. For any given enterprise system there's often a community of users that will share SQL. I.E. MS Great Plains was a great source (but I haven't used them in years).
Hope this long reply has value - keep up the good work.