What would you switch to using instead of excel in a corporate workplace, when you aren't a programmer by trade?

I have a friend that is working on a company without any real IT people, and they've gone the classical corporate route of stringing things together with Excel macros whenever they need something. I was trying to figure out what alternatives are available for someone that isn't a programmer by trade.

What is an easy alternative to Excel when you want to distribute data offline together with forms for manipulating it, that doesn't have a steep learning cu开发者_JAVA百科rve? I was going to suggest he learn Python and SQL-lite, but I'm hoping StackOverflow can come up with a wiser answer.

Honestly, for non developers (and if you do not have a dev staff in-house) there really isn't anything wrong with Excel.

That being said, Lightswitch is a new and fairly interesting option for basic forms over data work (although it's still a bit green).

IMO once you go down the route of languages like Python, etc. you're really looking at someone who is going to have to be a programmer (and they may be shooting themselves in the foot on a regular basis).

In that type of environment users end up with Excel or Access to manipulate data. Excel is convenient where cells in row are calculated the same way, but with exceptional cases. Access is better for calculating over multiple rows easily, data management forms (yes Excel can do it too, but Access is easier) and formatted reports.

The best situation I've arrived at in this type of environment is standing up read only "data warehouse" that Excel and Access users can link or download data from to manipulate on their own. For this situation SQL Server is probably the right choice and I use quotes around "data warehouse" because I don't mean it in the technical sense, but rather just a convenient repository. That way you have one definitive system of record. Then any report generated in either tool repeatedly becomes a candidate for incorporation into that warehouse.