Two cons against NoSQL data stores read like this: 1. It’s very hard to move data out from one NoSQL to some other system, even other NoSQL. There is a very hard lock in when it comes to NoSQL. If you ever have to move to another database, you have basically to re-implement a lot [...]

The MySQL Windows Experience Team is proud to announce the release of MySQL for Excel version 1.1.0 GA, one of our newest products contained in the MySQL Installer suite.  This new version introduces the Edit MySQL Data feature.

You can download it from our official Downloads page at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/installer/.

Dear Kettle friends,

Last year, right after the summer in version 4.1 of Pentaho Data Integration, we introduced the notion of dynamically inserted ETL metadata (Youtube video here).  Since then we received a lot of positive feedback on this functionality which encouraged me to extend it to a few more steps. Already with support for “CSV Input” and “Select Values” we could do a lot of dynamic things.  However, we can clearly do a lot better by extending our initiative to a few more steps: “Microsoft Excel Input” (which can also read ODS by the way), “Row Normalizer” and “Row De-normalizer”.

Below I’ll describe an actual (obfuscated) example that you will probably recognize as it is equally hideous as simple in it’s horrible complexity.

Take a look at this file:

Let’s assume that this spreadsheet …

I read this article recently about how BI users just really love and are used to their Excel sheets for almost anything they do. My first reaction was "duh". My second reaction was that even I used Excel recently to help me data cleanse some contact information.
Its easy to use, the functions are clear, I can develop my own functions in VBA, I can use colors to see problems with values, etc...
I mean I can bet you that "even" if you use MySQL and you want to play around with the data to see if you can find anything, you would use Excel.

But as the article says, there are some drawbacks in terms of time spent fixing errors and if you use Excel sheets that connect to other Excel sheet and then you go and insert a column or something.


Anyway, the …