Group,
I am something of a newbie to databases and writing SQL commands to query data tables. However I have had some formal training and some experience and believe I have a fair/general knowledge of how databases work. But I have a handful of general questions:
I'm in the hotel industry. Obviously we have many hotels to manage. My particular segment is Revenue Management. Currently I'm on a small team creating analytics. Some of this work includes updating rate plans and specific rates. These changes and additions are currently done one (1) hotel at a time and one (1) rate plan at a time. It is my belief and desire to download multiple properties, their rate plans and rates into a flat file (Excel). I currently do this with no issues. I then want to make appropriate changes to that data and then upload this data back into the data tables. I'm getting a lot of push back from the IT team. They say it can't be done. I say it can. I've done it before on other systems. I've written some small programs on my own that had a database attached and did the same thing. The database we use is Oracle. I don't know any other information about it. So my questions are as follows:
1) Can new data be inserted into the appropriate data tables using the information from an Excel spreadsheet?
2) Can existing data be overwritten (APPEND) into the appropriate data tables using the information from an Excel spreadsheet?
3) To do this, what tools are required (a database manager of some type - I'm very familiar with TOAD and Microsoft SQL Server Manager)?
4) Are there older Oracle databases that are difficult to update data from a spreadsheet?
5) If there are issues or difficulties in doing any of the above, what are they?
We do things that to me, are old and antiquated. Manipulating large amounts of data one property at a time and one rate plan at a time is time consuming and laborious. It takes us 1200 man hours to do all the updating currently. I believe there is a better, faster and more accurate way to do this since the information is virtually the same for every property.
Thoughts?
In advance, thanks for your thoughts.
Don