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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>when they can just use spreadsheets like Excel
Excel and similar spreadsheet software works fine for storing small datasets but it is not designed or intended to work on the massive volumes of data that large (or frankly, even small) companies need for day-to-day operations. We’re not just talking about the amount of data, but how much new data is being added to it on a daily/hourly/secondly basis (in data science, this is called “velocity”).
>or make their own spreadsheet software?
This is sort of like asking “why would I buy a car from Ford when I could build one in my garage?” The answer is usually some combination of “I don’t have the tools or expertise to do it myself,” “if I spent all my time making (and maintaining) it myself I wouldn’t have time to do anything else,” and “someone else has already designed, built, and tested it, why should I redo all of that work?”
Excel is mostly designed for performing basic mathematical analyses on small amounts of data. And frankly it’s not really very good at that. People do use it for managing finances or performing statistical analyses, but there are lots of specialist software tools for those kinds of tasks that work better.
Database systems are mostly designed for securely storing and retrieving large quantities of data, and for ensuring that it remains consistent. Here are some things that are generally pretty easy with database software but difficult with Excel:
* ensuring that the database won’t be left in an inconsistent state if the system goes down while someone is in the middle of updating records
* retrieving or modifying all data that match certain, possibly complex, criteria
* restricting access so that certain types of data can only be seen by certain users
* logging access so that it’s possible to tell who has seen which pieces of data
* storing extremely large amounts of data (e.g. Excel is limited to about a million rows, a few thousand columns, and a few thousand characters in each cell)
* managing complicated hierarchical data structures, e.g. keeping track of which employees are in charge of which other employees, which buildings they are based in, etc.
Having said that, there are plenty of other options for database software besides Oracle, including numerous free and open-source database systems. Generally, the big advantages of picking a famous commercial application are that it is likely to be well supported and that it will be easy to find staff who are familiar with it.
Spreadsheets are useful for analysis of data that has been filtered and aggregated. Think hundreds or maybe a couple thousand rows that probably contain only the columns you’re interested in. Ex: you have a certain timeframe of sales data and want to calculate or visualize some key metrics, build a few charts, etc. It’s more of a reporting tool that a data storage tool.
A database is a data storage solution. You’re generally using software to interact with the database. Not a DB client, but software that provides features you need and uses the DB as it’s data store (Ex: sales or inventory software, or this Reddit app you’re using to read this). The DB can store much more data (millions of rows or more), organize/structure the data (tables, keys, joins), facilitate efficient retrieval, can be backed up/replicated for high availability and disaster recovery, provide security features and the list goes on.
At the enterprise level you’re looking at many systems like ERP, CRM, manufacturing, HR and more that all use their own DB to store data. Data in the DB would be structured in a way that is useful for the software but probably not so much for a human to interpret. Then you may have some reporting layer of software that allows aggregation of all of this data, to get it into a more human readable form. Then the output of the reporting layer ends up in excel and a bunch of business analysts and managers sit in a meeting looking at it.
Oracle is just one vendor that provides a DB solution (as well as many other software products). There are many other flavors of DBs, some that are free and some that aren’t. Oracle has a big footprint in the enterprise space. A lot of systems are designed to integrate with Oracle as the DB. Large companies have a lot at stake with data storage and trust Oracle to provide support and reliability.
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