Eli5: Why do companies use the products of Oracle to store information, when they can just use spreadsheets like Excel, or make their own spreadsheet software?

Question

I just can’t seem to comprehend how Oracle can be so wealthy off of making a database when it’s theoretically easy for a company to store its own information.

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Answer 1

Databases store much, MUCH more information than a spreadsheet reasonably can, and they can manipulate, search, and provide other features around that information more effectively.

You don’t just want to *store* the information. You want to be able to use it for various purposes. You often want guarantees of security or reliability. You want to be able to connect information from different “spreadsheets” (*tables*, in database terminology). You want to be able to do all sorts of performance optimizations. You might need to spread your database across the world for rapid response times, which requires a whole other set of tools. And so on.

Spreadsheets start getting pretty slow if you’re doing anything complex at even a few thousand rows. Databases, on the other hand, can routinely contain *millions* of rows even for relatively low-scale purposes. At scales like that, you need much more sophisticated tools than a spreadsheet can provide.