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join operations with excel tables (free?)

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urlwolf:
Hi,

is there any free (or cheap) program that can do join operations with excel tables? I have found digDB, but is pricey and it's only a six-month license...

Thanks

bmm:
You can take a look at Kettle / Pentaho Data Integration. This is a very nice open source data integration/ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Loading) tool. It is more focused at integrating data from databases and other sources into data warehouse solutions, but it can also be used for "simple" excel transformations.

It is probably somewhat overkill for what you are after and it does have a learning barrier, but if you have some database knowledge it is very powerful.

urlwolf:
You can take a look at Kettle / Pentaho Data Integration. This is a very nice open source data integration/ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Loading) tool. It is more focused at integrating data from databases and other sources into data warehouse solutions, but it can also be used for "simple" excel transformations.

It is probably somewhat overkill for what you are after and it does have a learning barrier, but if you have some database knowledge it is very powerful.
-bmm (March 16, 2007, 12:32 PM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks bmm, love the avatar.
Looks like pentaho spreadsheet services is not free, and they only give a quote by mail. The entire thing seems much more complicated that I expected. I honestly don't know what kettle does after about a min. in their page. Looks like this would require serious time investment.

digDB seems to do join operations, which is what I want. But I'm sure there must be free alternatives.

I used to do all data mungling in R, but I have seen some hardcore excel people doing cool stuff visually, and I'm trying to 'learn' excel (pivot tables etc) after ignoring it for my entire life.

kfitting:
Do you know VBA?  Not sure exactly what you want to do, but VBA would allow you to join spreadsheets from different workbooks, GUI or no GUI.

Kevin 

tinjaw:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Don't go over to the dark side!!!!!

You are a Jedi of the command line - Wizard of the script - Oracle of code. Do not succumb to the glitz and glitter of the GUI dark side! For all they offer is vain. Once enticed you will only then learn of the shallowness of the dark side. It is a mere facade that will prove weak and easily overtaxed with all but the meagerest of demands upon it.

Kevin, IMNeverSHO, is right. If you can "do" R, you should look to VBA. With VBA you will be able to take from the dark side it's meager offerings of GUI goodness and yet resist the temptation to do GUI gymnastics when CodeFu will get you there via a more elegant path.

We, brothers of the code, are here for you. We have behind us the knowledge of many before us. The knowledge upon which the GUI generation is dependent. GUIs shall always stand upon the ground made solid by our brethren. We, keepers of Ada, custodians of Lisp, clerics of C, protectors of Perl too have our young generation of warriors. We too enter the future with youth and vigor, but such as ours is built on code and shall protect the earth through Ruby and Python. Have faith in your ancestors urlwolf. Our strength runs deep throughout the universe.

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