Once a spreadsheet starts to become a valuable source of data, the data should be stuffed into the database where it can be shared, kept up to date, be viewed consistently by all parts of the business, and joined with other data for reporting purposes. Then, when it makes sense to build or buy an application centered around a database, you already have a source of clean consistent data ready and waiting.
I'm guessing there is a tool somewhere that will take a set of data from a database and present it like a spreadsheet for import/export of updates. Anyone have a pointer? Is anyone doing anything fancy like exporting their Visio to CSV some other sort for inclusion into a database as meta data? (for viewing one would grab the data and then ask Visio to render it) DJ