January 27, 2026 at 4:54 pm
It sounds like what we're discussing here is not Excel as a database but rather as a data interchange format that can be easily copied to a network folder or uploaded to an FTP / web site for public consumption. But even for that use case, Excel exposes it's shortcomings these days. Another issue I've seen SQL Server's import wizard, and this probably applies to other ETL tools, is that it will ignore hidden rows or columns.
Where I work, we have been using Parquet internally for some projects like data archival to Azure cold storage or offline data analytics (not PII or financial data). This is a columnstore format with up to 99% compression and is strongly typed. Python and other data analysis tools can easily work with it.
For public datasets, an argument could be made for simply hosting it in a cloud database maybe.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
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