1. blog
2. 03
3. FlaterJared

Shouldn't we just use Excel?

Posted by Jared Flater

1. How can relational databases help you with your research? I think relational databases can help me with my research by providing a template for data organization. For some, like me, the best way to structure data isn’t necessarily the obvious one. By looking to model that exist and have to handle large amounts of data, I can get a good idea of an efficient organization method.

2. Is there any aspect of them that makes them a poor fit for you? For me, the idea of learning SQL makes implementing a relational database system unlikely. My brain is already bulging at the seems from cramming so much R, Python and Bash into it over the last year, the idea of learning another language is not appealing at the moment. Additionally, I’m unsure of how relational databases would look in a research setting like our lab’s.

3. What other types of databases are there? A lot, for every type of content, technology and area there is a database. From Wikipedia two that caught my eye:

   1. Temporal
   2. Spatial It like these two for the questions that could be queried, such as “Where is the closest farmer growing wheat?” or “When is the average wheat harvest for Iowa?” These questions become more powerful as data is collected from the field, often in real-time, I imaging there is a lot of data to be mined for questions related to ecology and agriculture!

How do you feel about learning a database?

Mortal Combat!