When moving data from one system to another, it is invariably the CSV format that is used: it’s conveniently supported by Excel, Access and almost every other spreadsheet and database management system. However, it’s not the best format to use. CSV, as it’s name suggests, uses commas to separate values into columns. Furthermore, text is [...]

It was a quiet Tuesday morning in May, just after a bank holiday Monday. I was getting on with my database of databases: a database that held information about the databases we supported, where they were, who used them and how many . . . that sort of thing. Today this would be referred to [...]