Company

U.S. Geological Survey

Description

United States Geological Survey - Federal source for science about the Earth, its natural and living resources, natural hazards, and the environment.

Web

www.usgs.gov

Requirements to meet

Be able to query data from an Oracle database and receive output in an Excel file quickly and easily. Be able to easily insert new data into tables. Make this available both to Oracle developers and on a limited basis to non-developers (who are given some brief training).

Issues to tackle

We want to be able to query data from an Oracle database and bring back the output in an easily readable, sortable format such as in Excel Want to be able to insert data into Oracle tables easily from Excel source. Want to be able to allow non-developers some access to data with an environment (Excel) that they are already used to dealing with.

Approach taken

For developers, we use the SQL*XL add-in weekly for routine tasks such as querying from a table or inserting new data.

For non-developers, we set up Excel workbooks so they can query data or insert new data (on a limited basis) without having to ask developers for assistance with simpler tasks.
 

Results

Very successful.

Both developers and non-developers use the tool frequently in doing simple database maintenance tasks. Querying for data works well as does inserting new records.