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$"

Max Roser

@maxcroser

In the UK the number of cases rose rapidly.
But the public – and authorities – are only learning this now because these cases were only published now as a backlog.

The reason was apparently that the database is managed in Excel and the number of columns had reached the maximum.

09:21 AM - 05 Oct 2020

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Comments

[John Peters]

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"

[Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli]

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

[Pablo Herrero]

🤦‍♂️