Google has announced support for forms that link into Google Doc’s spreadsheets, providing elementary Access/ DB style form support for its online office suite.
The new service allows users to add data to a spreadsheet without having to enter it directly into the spreadsheet itself, or having to log in to add the data. A form can be set up to include the specific fields, then a link is offered to the form itself. One obvious use for the feature would be to conduct a survey. The forms are not embeddable as yet, however data can be extracted via RSS feed.
Although still far from becoming a competitor to Microsoft Access, this basic functionality will appeal to those who use Access as a glorified spreadsheet with forms for data entry, which at least in my previous workplace experience, its a decent portion of Access users. Here’s hoping that SQL querying might come next.
Cool functionality. Another review here: http://tinyurl.com/2orzbp
SQL queries? I’d be happy if the word processor supported paragraphs.
Stronger customization (via CSS) is also very important and lacking.
-R
This certainly sounds interesting. And what does Google get out of it?
Google is catching up to Microsoft here, but it’s very unclear when businesses/enterprise would switch. The recent acq. attempt per Yahoo is making Google seems pretty weak overall and bringing into question the viability of many of their products. Perhaps it is just a search engine, with little competition. Notably the startup http://www.managedq.com seems to be making some waves lately.
Applications, once only found installed on local machines, are going to the web as well. Google is slowly catching up in that market.
As more and more goes online, will we reach a time when all applications will be accessed via the web?
Honestly, I don’t know what Google is waiting for. They have the brains to get this ready and surely those wanting to bail from Microsoft with the possible Yahoo acquisition would be more than happy to help if nothing more than to stick it to MS.
I think the biggest improvement they could have in the Apps section is a Matt Cutts-like representative. They should have one for every division, that guy is the face of their search spam.
If Google got their act together here, companies would be switching in a heartbeat, the longer they wait, the more potential customers they could turn away.
I really like the way Google is advancing its office suite; gradually, organically, based on users’ feedback and best of all within the same original context. It definitely feels more like a tightly integrated suite and less of separate tools tied together, like the original Microsoft Office.
This is what we get, as developers start adapting their work to the cloud environment and learn to take advantage of the natural benefits, instead of trying to recreate the same-old software in a more distributed environment.
we might see live-documents to integrate with MS SQL Server..in near future
@ Mat – yep – lots of basics still lacking – need to continue improving the core before aiming at yet another product
but each step forward is another reason not to fire up office
This is just Google’s way of telling Trackvia, Blist, and ZohoDB to beware…
This is great in spreading adoption so it’s clearly a marketing move for google. However if they want to really spread GApps, I think the product itself needs to be improved. For now making a ‘lookable’ document in Docs is a pain. And sometimes you want to collaborate on something that wont look like a disaster if you show it to your customer.
never used google apps, can’t stand working in a pos browser and i need a file system for persistance, good luck.
I use Google Docs everyday and never been happier.
Nice addition.
It definitely feels more like a tightly integrated suite and less of separate tools tied together, like the original Microsoft Office.http://typeofbreastcancer.info/
This is pretty amazing. With the ability to subscribe to a spreadsheet data via RSS, this can theoretically be used to create sites with user-generated content without a database.
I’m watching the interest steadily grow in the idea of web accessible relational databases. It’s naturally going to start with the “glorified spreadsheet” but the logical conclusion is that the database itself should be truly “web based”. It takes a bit of a mind-bend to really grasp the architectural shift in web development that is going to take place when it becomes possible to develop a full blown, extremely high performance website, without having to actually install or maintain the database yourself. Check out http://www.nextdb.net if you want to get an idea of where this is going.
looks like the end of wufoo.com, huh? too bad. i like wufoo better, but they have some random limits…
Wufoo is a great product, Gsheets adding a forms widget makes a lot of sense. Mainly, all the activity in this space is exciting and validating. Online productivity market penetration is still so low in terms of the mainstream – but it really seems like innovation & awareness are bringing us to a tipping point in mainstream adoption.
Good times!
Mathew
http://www.blist.com
Niiice, little by little they are doing great improvements.
Keep an eye on what Amazon is doing as well with their services, especially SimpleDB. We might see services based on them quite soon.
Google already has a DB application called Base. This isn’t an emulation of Access tied to Excel, it’s an emulation of Sharepoint forms in conjunction with a web server or Outlook filling Excel data.
Google docs’ forms should have an email function. They should also allow CSS editing (auto scroll is annoying).