Manipulating data is one of my favorite things to do. I have created several applications to process the sales of a product or service from start to finish using only excel embedding them into html code. This allows users to sort and filter the data as necessary. Creating a small data sets is easy using excel. For larger projects you want a database that can process your information quickly. Creating a database is an art and takes much time and thought to adequately account for all data that will be added and processed. Knowing what you need to process is crucial before starting the design process.