[Python-talk] Excel vs. SQLite w Python ?

[Kent Johnson]

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Peter Courlis <neat_gent at yahoo.com> wrote:
> python-talk at dlslug.org
>
> I have a project that uses Excel for basic data management (several columns and 100 rows).
> Since I add or update data each week, it gets to be time consuming
> to manually add data to each individual cell that I want to
> copy, change, create new data, etc...
>
> Last night I had a dream  about using SQLite to do the same thing,
> then I could create a mini-GUI or generate "select Cmd Line entries" to
> accomplish some of the general or redundant activities...

This sounds reasonable though I don't know what you mean by "select
Cmd Line entries". Some options for working with SQLite:
- simple command-line apps to manipulate the database
- roll your own GUI; I would look at Tkinter and wxPython for this.
Tkinter is pretty easy to get started with. I don't know if it has a
good table widget. wxPython probably does.
- Use Dabo for the GUI - http://dabodev.com. I don't have experience
with this but it is intended for creation of database-driven apps.
- Use Django and create a web interface. You can run the Django dev
server on your own computer, you don't have to host it anywhere. The
advantage of this is that the Django Admin UI gives you fairly
powerful CRUD operarations pretty much for free.

> Some how, I am stuck on the SQLite approach since each table
> would have a just a few columns, and only a few tables. Then,
> I can add (Replicate) a table periodically, to add new accounts ...

So you periodically add new tables (excel sheets or files)? This might
be a bit awkward in Django, it wants a fixed schema. It might work
better to have one table with a column which says which account it is.

One nice thing about having the data in SQLite is that you can mix and
match these approaches - they can all work from the same database.

Kent