Flat data
To help decide which program isbest for storing your data, ask yourself the following question: is the data
relational or not? Data that can be efficiently contained in a single table or
worksheet is called flat or nonrelational data. For example, if you want to
create a simple list of customers, with only one address and contact person for
each customer, Excel might be the better choice.
Data
You can use Excel to connect to awide variety of data sources including Access, SQL Server and Analysis Services
databases, text and XML files, and ODBC and OLE DB data sources. However, you
cannot edit the data to change the source data through the Excel user
interface.
Modeling
InExcel, you can use what-if analysis tools to forecast the outcome of a
worksheet model. What-if analysis allows you to run different scenarios on your
data, such as best case and worst case scenarios, and compare the resulting
data of several scenarios in a summary report.
Multiple user access to data
In Excel, you can share a workbookwith other users, but multi-user collaboration functions best when users work
on the data in that workbook at different times instead of simultaneously. In
effect, users of an Access database collaborate on a set of data, and users of an Excel workbook collaborate on a document.
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