Yeah, excel is ok for what it does. But since I'm a database guy, for most of my stuff I take a database approach
However, excel is handy because you can publish to the web with it and you can just hang a workbook out there and pretty much use it native right on the web if you want.
http://www.awrats.com/examplexls.htm is a published version
http://www.awrats.com/examplexls.xls is the straight excel version (you have to have excel on your puter though)