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> As for commenting that Excel is "not an appropriate tool for
> technical
> documentation" *to the hiring manager*--I can nearly guarantee you
> that this would be a strong factor in completely blowing any
> opportunity an applicant may have to get the job. Once employed,
Especially if I was the one doing the interviewing. At a previous
gig, I used Excel extensively. I was writing database dictionaries.
>From within a CA Associates database application, I exported all the
meta data one afternoon and combined them all into a very large
Excel. However, since this was on 64 diffeent databases, I needed a
way to filter out data for each database and also create
sub-dictionaries that spanned across multiple databases (for
instance...a dictionary on all databases accross all servers that
were involved in the order fulfillment process and the fraud
protection process).
Once I used the Excel filtering to get what I needed, I imported the
filtered data into FrameMaker. From the same set of metadata, through
a 26,000 row Excel table, I was able to create a numer of separate
data dictionaries one after another....bing, bing, bing. What took me
a couple of days by putting Excel into the mix would have taken me
weeks if I had to go directly from the CA application to FM.
The really nice thing was that I put the Excel database on the
network and the network services depatment could run their own
filtering scenarios to troubleshoot network issues.
Never discount ANY tool, any techique, or any personal resource that
can help you along.
=====
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
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