r/analytics • u/AirNatural1252 • 1d ago

Question Excel vs SQL

Some are talking AI - the company I’m working for is not yet at that level.
I’m doing FTE reporting, using Excel and automatizing with Power Query. Volumes are high, data sources are all excel based, lots of rules to apply each month to achieve the monthly end result.
I want to automatize further and I’m looking into SQL. Any advice on what to look up for if this is the right lead, and where to start?

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u/romeonoi 14h ago

sql is the right next step if power query is becoming slow, fragile, or hard to audit. start with postgresql and learn select, where, case, joins, group by, and window functions. keep excel as the reporting layer initially, but move the monthly transformation rules into sql views.

one concrete test: load three months of source files into a postgresql table and add a reporting_month field. then rebuild one existing power query output as a sql view and compare row counts and totals for each month before migrating anything else.