Implementing WHERE and ORDER BY as spreadsheet formulas

Abstract

The WHERE and ORDER BY clauses of the SQL SELECT statement select a subset of rows in the result of a database query and present the result in the specified order. In a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, one could use the filter and sort buttons, or use its Query or its Pivot Table tools to achieve a similar effect. The disadvantage of using those tools is that they don't react automatically to changes in the calculated values of the spreadsheet. In this paper, we develop spreadsheet formulas that implement SQL's WHERE and ORDER BY clauses.