DEV Community

Atomzwieback
Atomzwieback

Posted on

UKs Covid system crashed due using Excel as "backend database"

From the category "you can not think of", the UK used an Excel sheet to save the results of tested Covid-19 cases. As they noticed that the Excel sheet not longer stores anything they took a look at the problem and found out that about 16,000 test cases are missing due the problem that the Excel file reached the maximum data which it can save.

This is the perfect example of "people with no clue doing stuff in the IT world" or "we have no money. your project budget is 5$"

Top comments (3)

Collapse
 
jwp profile image
John Peters • Edited

SQL Server Express, has many excel import functions , it's free and stores 10Gb of data.

Here's an excel import to Mongo

Mongo: $ mongoimport -d mydb -c things --type csv --file locations.csv --headerline

However, cloud solutions are probably better all around. They'll give you the free tier hoping you'll need more (which is pay as you go).

"The best way to lean is the school of hard knocks"

Collapse
 
mellen profile image
Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

LOL the problem has been "solved" by splitting the file into batches. Whatever works, I guess.

Collapse
 
pablohs1986 profile image
Pablo Herrero

๐Ÿคฆโ€โ™‚๏ธ