Free Cloud PostgreSQL Database (20MB)

The days of manually combining and merging spreadsheet files into a report are over! This guide will show you how to build an automated report that accepts scheduled imports of your spreadsheets, using Holistics and a free cloud database service called ElephantSQL. This is especially useful if you just want to test things out, and aren't sure whether to use services like Amazon or Google to create your cloud database.

For those of you who haven't got a database, ElephantSQL offers a free tier, for a small PostgreSQL cloud database instance! It literally takes less than 10 seconds to setup, and will let you use our powerful Holistics features to automate your spreadsheet reporting process.

How It Works#

Head on over to the ElephantSQL website at https://elephantsql.com, create an account and select the free tier. Now you just need to give your database instance a name, select the region and data center (typically one that's closest to you), click create instance and you're done!

Create a free PostgreSQL database

Connecting your new cloud database to Holistics requires just a few details. Click on your new database to pull up its details, and copy over the following information of 1. Host, 2. Database Name and Username, 3. Password and 4. Port.

Database details to connect to Holistics

Now that your database is connected, you're ready to begin merging your spreadsheets to create your Holistics reports! The two examples given in the video are:

Adding date and monthly price data from three different spreadsheets into a single report automatically, using Append mode in Data Imports. [1:10]
Updating existing records and adding new data from two different spreadsheets into a report, to update the order delivery status from Pending to Delivered or Cancelled. This uses the Incremental import mode for Data Imports. [2:57]