Picture the scene.
You filter your mailing list to everyone who lives in St. Augustine. Then someone gets left out. Who is it? It’s the people who live in Saint Augustine.
Or you have to look in ten places to find one thing with ten variations.
Or your file is too large to email because it contains 1000 duplicates.
Or some of Janine’s details are missing because someone entered them as Jeanine.
Or your information is obsolete the next day because the world keeps turning.
Or it’s time to write employee performance appraisals and you have no idea what they’ve actually accomplished.
These are the reasons developers love databases. You can, too. And you don’t have to be a developer.
Mind you, there is a permanent place in my heart for Microsoft Access. I will be crushed when they finally lay it in the grave. I have moved on to MySQL, but my heart swells when I re-open my Access masterpiece.
Truth be told, though, it’s pretty darn easy to replicate those fancy d-bases using good old Google Sheets. Here’s a productivity database I created for a retail company. You enter employee’s name, production count, and cash register totals. Then you turn the page to see your results. Lo and behold, there’s your updated production report, P&L, and employee performance appraisals, already formatted and updated to the minute.
Want to make your own? It’s actually fun, if you are patient. Let’s do it!