The limitations of keeping the data in a flat table is driving me nuts. Are there any good free online sql servers where I could store this tiny dataset?
Perhaps an sqlite database could work? and if you want to make it available via github still you can set it up so you can get nice diffs still https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13271643/git-hook-for-diff-sqlite-table
Been thinking about this a bit more and the above solution would be a bit questy I reckon.
I haven't used them before but these people offer a free tier for postgresql hosting
https://www.elephantsql.com/plans.html AWS has a 12 month free trial that includes a database server, and Google cloud platform gives you $300 credit when you sign up which would be enough for ~30 months of free usage on their smallest postgresql instance.
For managing the data, I thought a straightforward option could be to keep an SQL script in the git repo that tears down and rebuilds the database each time. Kind of funny as you'd be effectively storing all the data in the SQL file, bit given it's only a few hundred lines it'd be fine, and would make it nice and easy for other people to use (no need to worry about shared database access).