Will I be stuck with using Windows Excel - Open Office Woes

[sukhiaatma]

Hello every one,

I am a bio-inforamtics student.I am facing a rather "weird problem".

Until now I have not been able to find a alternative to Windows Excel

The Reason

1. Have files with data entries/rows in excess of 65000

Open office can handle files with rows up-to 65000 (I think with a patch. Cant confirm though)

"Please suggest a Alternative/'s"

[Tibuda]

MS Excel limit is also 65536 rows. If you have to manage a larger database, you should switch to a true database manager like:
Open source: MySQL, Firebird, PostgreSQL
Proprietary: Oracle, MS SQL Server

[sukhiaatma]

MS Excel limit is also 65536 rows. If you have to manage a larger database, you should switch to a true database manager like:
Open source: MySQL, Firebird, PostgreSQL
Proprietary: Oracle, MS SQL Server

They fixed that I guess..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spreadsheet_software

[leandromartinez98]

You probably should learn some programming language to deal
with that ammount of data, because using excel or its alternatives
will be painful. If what you want is doing graphs, try qtiplot
or xmgrace instead.

[xadder]

I agree about the programming - nearly always better than a spreadsheet for even small databases. Consider python+pylab(matplotlib).

[InfernalNeutrino]

xadder++ .... python + matplotlib = win.

I ran into this exact issue (the 65k line limit) once upon a time when my advisor asked me to debug some program I had never worked with before and I needed a fast way to spit out debugging information... it's really easy to parse text files containing the data with those tools. I actually pretty much stopped using spreadsheets after that because I realized just how much more capable an actual programming language is hehe. Cheers!

[leandromartinez98]

Yeah, after learning programming you realize how inefficient and limited are spreadsheets.

[hsweet]

Plus there might already be stuff you can use. I know there is a bio-perl project for genomics. Holy large data set, batman!

[sdbrogan]

Gnumeric can be recompiled for more rows :

http://projects.gnome.org/gnumeric/faq.shtml#5

Not advisable though - 65 536 is already far too many

[ahmatti]

Also check R www.r-project.org and www.bioconductor.org.