Hi, reporters! This is a very data-y one, so hopefully it will make sense to everyone.
I was recently updating a spreadsheet and realized was missing a vital piece of data (think “proposal dates”). Luckily, I had those dates in another spreadsheet, but the rows were all jumbled up, so I couldn’t just copy and paste. The solution to this problem is a SQL thing called “joining.”
SQL is a more advanced version of what you’re already (hopefully!) doing with spreadsheets. The tool I used for this is a “sandbox” called DB Fiddle.
You don’t have to download a program, use an import wizard or select an encoding. You basically just copy and paste a dataset into a web screen, then type your SQL queries on the righthand side.
Kaboom! A very prescient warning, that you may have already figured out if you’re a data person, is that DB Fiddle is a very basic, rough-around-the-edges option for SQL analysis. It does NOT save queries or datasets, unless you have a premium plan, and it exports results as Markdown for some reason? instead of a CSV.
So if you’re doing more serious or sensitive reporting projects, it would be much more responsible to use a full-capacity program like SQLite. But I have a soft spot for web-only versions of stuff (like Google Colab), so I like DB Fiddle for simple copy+paste SQL queries. Combine your datasets, reporters!