MS Excel

[Wudang]

With Microsoft Access you do not need any other software. It is similar to Excel with extra features, like being able to define relationships between tables and very easy to produce reports and views. No need to touch SQL (unless you want to). It is all done for you. Great if you are the only one doing updates.

My query above was asking does other software work just as easily? It looks like, from reading other people's posts, the answer is no.

Right - MySql the front-end (Workbench) isn't bundled with it.It's a separate download.
The SQLite BM mentions is quite cool. The Plex media server uses it under the covers for its catalog.
I had a quick look at Libre Office Base and the "create a new DB wizard" seems pretty straightforward compared to my dim and distant memories of helping someone with MS Access.
We've wandered away from Excel though which is a different beast though Excel can be a useful tool for analysing a DB.

 

[TragicMonkey]

We've wandered away from Excel though which is a different beast though Excel can be a useful tool for analysing a DB.

Indeed. It's sometimes easier to grab a bunch of detailed data from a database, dump it into a spreadsheet, and play with it there to see what's in there. It feels like getting your hands directly on the data. I also like to pivot raw data in Excel in order to double check any complicated grouping and pivoting I've done in SQL, so if I get different results I can see I've made a mistake somewhere.

Excel's also handy sometimes in writing SQL, like if you have a large list of values you need to put in your query sometimes it's easier to use concatenate and other text functions in Excel to format them before you paste them into your query. I frequently get handed lists of names or numbers to pull data about, and begin able to format them for my convenience first is handy.

 

[wobs]

We've wandered away from Excel though which is a different beast though Excel can be a useful tool for analysing a DB.

Hey, that's fine, as I'm pretty clueless with SQL, so I may learn something if you keep it in "English".

 

[Wudang]

Hey, that's fine, as I'm pretty clueless with SQL, so I may learn something if you keep it in "English".

At its heart SQL is easy - it's just set theory you learned in school maths. Think of it like that and a lot falls into place.