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Originally Posted by dcw9996
I have a few questions, if I may. I was interested in the suggestions about MS SQL, so I took a look around. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I read it seems that SQL is used to "access" different databases (like MS Access, Orale, Sybase, etc). None of my daily work is in any of these databases, so would this avenue be a waste of time?
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It wouldn't be a waste of time at all. Many applications these days are tied to databases for a number of reasons. One reason is it allows for greater data integrity. If you've got multiple sources accessing- and potentially modifying- the same set of data, having a DBMS (database management system) mediate access is a good idea. Another good reason to use a database is because sorting and searching are among the most common operations on data, and by using a database, you can take advantage of the work that a lot of clever people have done to optimize the searching and sorting routines.
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Originally Posted by dcw9996
All of my work is in Excel. This is for 2 reasons. 1) I'm good with Excel so it's easy for me. But the second reason is the main reason. My bosses, while not very good at all with Excel, they are familiar with it. So I have set up an "interface" sheet (so to speak) and they can go there and easily "ask" questions of the database that I've built. MS Access, which is available to us, scare the crap out of them. And the learning curve for them would be horrendus.
So, referring back to a suggestion lectricpharoah made, what language could I use to create my own database from the Excel data that I have? Will SQL pull info from Excel as well? If I were to put my data from Excel into Access, what could I use to build a simple interface to pull info from Access, and allow dunderheads to research info from the database?
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Well, Excel is a spreadsheet, not a database, but you can transfer data between it and, say, MS Access. A simple table in a database can be represented as a single 'sheet' in Excel. It's when you get to inter-related tables that it gets more complicated.
If you go on
MSDN, you will find examples and articles about interfacing Excel with various languages, like C# and VB.NET. To answer your other question, it's quite simple to pull data from a database (MS Access or otherwise) into a .NET application, and update the database from the application. This way, you can have the app present a friendly user interface, with fields that the user fills in, and the app does all the work of displaying and updating things. This sounds a lot like what you're looking for, making me think a database is a better tool than a spreadsheet for your needs.