Comments on: Using Google Spreadsheets as a database (no, it really is very interesting, honest)

By: Michelle Lee

Michelle Lee — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:02:06 +0000

Thanks for the post. Here’s a post which shows how to convert your excel to web in minutes http://blog.caspio.com/integration/convert-ms-excel-to-web/

By: Jaydeep

Jaydeep — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:05:25 +0000

@James Goffin :

The author here means that Google Spreadsheets can be used as Databases in the cloud. You just update the data and create some dynamic app that receives the updated data and displays it on the users screen, be it a mobile, tablet or desktop PC.

By: Tony Hirst

Tony Hirst — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:08:17 +0000

@miek What do you mean exactly? what do you want to do?
IF you just want to bookmark queries into a spreadsheet, then the google viz api is accessed via a URL; eg http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/datastore/coiwebsites.php?run=true&gqc=A,B,EL%2BEN%2BEP%2BER%2BET&gqw=&gqo= has links to the spreadsheet query:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/tq?tqx=out:html&tq=select%20A,B,EL%2BEN%2BEP%2BER%2BET&key=0AmbQbL4Lrd61dGdGX2MxODE1Y2dzV3BJWXduQmlEWHc

By: Paul Bradshaw

Paul Bradshaw — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:58:42 +0000

Probably best to ask that question on Tony’s original post, but I’ll ask him too.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:00:06 +0000

How would I pass a variable to the url? Is there a way to mask the URL?

By: hari

hari — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:27:59 +0000

After reading your blog, I was curious to search if there is any app that really uses Google spreadsheet as database and check this out, there is a entire time tracker using Google Spreadsheet as database. http://screeperzone.com/2009/06/05/activity-tracker-plus-track-all-your-life-activities-with-just-a-single-click/.

By: Nicolas

Nicolas — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:36:41 +0000

The problem is that don’t work with private spreadsheet only public. Any idea to work with provate spreadsheet and make queries like this. Will be great !

By: James

James — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:47:31 +0000

This is interesting indeed.

I tried with my own spreadsheet,
“http://spreadsheets.google.com/tq?tqx=out%3Ahtml&tq=select+count%28A%29+where+A%3DPHP%3Fkey%3D0AipNn919hx-OdHNhTDl1RExJVlFMUXVwOGUtNjdzanc&hl=en”

but I always got this message:
“Oops, an error occured.
Status: error
Reason: Access denied
Description: Access denied”

Anyone can view and edit the spreadsheet via the key I used in this example, how come I still get access denied ?

By: Every news organisation should have a Datastore | Online Journalism Blog

Every news organisation should have a Datastore | Online Journalism Blog — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:51:14 +0000

[...] has already produced some great work from what I once described as the “Technician” variant of distributed [...]

By: paulbradshaw

paulbradshaw — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:37:32 +0000

James, Calli – the ‘news’ here it seems to me is that you can alter the URL in ways that filter information in more sophisticated ways than just using ‘sort’. It’s that that makes this more like a database you can interrogate using combinations of factors than a simple spreadsheet