I've observed disasters created in spreadsheets. I've also observed -- and occasionally created -- robust models and calculations.
One flipside is that, if you know what you're doing, it's very easy to created orthogonal calculations and comparisons in order to check your work. And, if something doesn't compare or look right, to track back step by step and through all the precedents to find the fault(s).
Databases can also create and hide problems, particularly if they are not understood and/or designed and set up properly. And some problems thusly created can be rather opaque, particularly to those without a good understanding of or access to the underlying design and the principles upon which it rests.
As with many things, ultimately I found that the problems lay not with spreadsheets, per se, but with the people using them and with the organizations that tasked those people without consideration for their capabilities (and limits thereof) and without adequate resources to do the job right.
Personally, there has been a time or three where -- in significant measure due to such resource constraints -- I would have been sunk without the flexibility that a spreadsheet -- often in combination with some programming and database work -- provided me. For example, I could quickly and programmatically deal with the 95% that was clean enough, and then manually go through and figure out and adjust the crap.
Ideal? Perhaps not. But then, "business" seldom is. (Nor "life", for that matter.)
One flipside is that, if you know what you're doing, it's very easy to created orthogonal calculations and comparisons in order to check your work. And, if something doesn't compare or look right, to track back step by step and through all the precedents to find the fault(s).
Databases can also create and hide problems, particularly if they are not understood and/or designed and set up properly. And some problems thusly created can be rather opaque, particularly to those without a good understanding of or access to the underlying design and the principles upon which it rests.
As with many things, ultimately I found that the problems lay not with spreadsheets, per se, but with the people using them and with the organizations that tasked those people without consideration for their capabilities (and limits thereof) and without adequate resources to do the job right.
Personally, there has been a time or three where -- in significant measure due to such resource constraints -- I would have been sunk without the flexibility that a spreadsheet -- often in combination with some programming and database work -- provided me. For example, I could quickly and programmatically deal with the 95% that was clean enough, and then manually go through and figure out and adjust the crap.
Ideal? Perhaps not. But then, "business" seldom is. (Nor "life", for that matter.)