The excel database functions (DAVERAGE, DCOUNT, DGET, DMAX, DMIN, DPRODUCT, DSTDEV, DSUM, DVAR) give you about 90% of what you want in a database with a query "language" that's simpler than SQL.
> The excel database functions (DAVERAGE, DCOUNT, DGET, DMAX, DMIN, DPRODUCT, DSTDEV, DSUM, DVAR) give you about 90% of what you want in a database with a query "language" that's simpler than SQL.
As someone who has worked rather extensively with both, no, they give a lot less than 90%, and for even fairly simple uses they are often more complex to use than SQL.
I've seen non-programmers with years of Excel experience and including several formal classes struggle to use the database functions to do things that non-programmers with similar levels of general technical proficiency breeze through in SQL after a single couple of days intro to SQL class. It's not a scientific study, but in my experience what I said is particularly true of the "non-programmer" mind.
Pivot Tables are even easier to construct and use than these functions. They calculate things like averages, counts and sums for lots of dimensions really quickly.
If you don't like the Pivot Table layout, you can use easily construct formulae to pull the relevant values from a Pivot Table into whatever format you want. You still get the speed of calculation/refresh and, if you label your fields well, have formulae which you can copy-paste across a large area, making the sheet easy to inspect and reason about.
