News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature. Parent comment

Re:Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature by DiabloD3 on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @01:33AM (#12349889)
The one thing SQL can't do that Excel can: a calculation cell, as in, one that starts with =.

Yes, I can probably code something entirely in SQL to do it, but it will not be portable across SQL implementations; and yes, I can code that as a variable in my program... but neither of them seem to be as fluent as the way Excel does it.

I wouldn't use Excel for prod, but it comes in handy for a lot of small dumb shit purely because of =.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature by Someone on Wednesday August 24, 2016 @04:43AM (#12350610)
Many databases support virtual columns (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_column)

If portability is really important, I think your best bet would be a view that adds the calculated columns.

Unfortunately, that's still not as easy as using Excel, by a long stretch.

[ Parent | on HN ]