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Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

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Re: Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

#51

Post by RyanHamilton »

arsalanb wrote: post #8

Out of curiosity, what took you 10 years? Keen to hear your journey as someone building in the same space..

Year 1 - Getting the first version out that worked for me and my colleagues. Year 2 - Cleaning it up enough to promote wider use. Documentation. Years 3-5 - Minor bug fixes only as I thought qStudio solved the problem. Years 6 - I realised restricting qStudio to only 1-2 database technologies was foolish. Major change to support many more databases. Improved generic SQL highlighting. Added a partial dark mode. Years 7-8 - Minor bug fixes. Year 9 - Added a proper Dark Mode and support for many themes by using FlatLaf. Now looking properly modern. Year 10 - Realise that I'm not fully solving the problem. That actually for most data analysts I should support creating the analysis (pivot table) and improve exporting (real excel export, not just nicely escaped CSV).

There were more learnings, like I should definitely have went fully open source at the start. It's harder to do later.

Re: Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

#52

Post by RyanHamilton »

menomatter wrote: post #10

Congratulations on the launch! is there any write up on how it's different than other popular db management tools?

It's aimed as an SQL tool for Data Analysts not DBAs. e.g. It has 10+ charts builtin that can be generated directly from queries. It allows creating pivots using a UI. It does not allow DBA tasks like altering columns. It features a unique integration with DuckDB that let's you save any result from any database to a local duckdb instance.

Re: Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

#53

Post by RyanHamilton »

self_awareness wrote: post #30

FYI Language: Java, GUI: Swing, Docking framework: DockingFrames (LGPL)

A massive shout out to DockingFrames + jsyntaxpane + FlatLaf. Java libraries just don't get the love or attention they deserve. Docking Frames has solved the multi-windows in docks better than any JS library I've used or looked at. It's the only one I've seen allows grouping multiples by end users seamlessly and this was over 10 years ago. Sadly Swing/jsyntaxpane have been left to stagnate. They work but are beginning to miss functionality compared to more modern alternatives.

Re: Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

#54

Post by RyanHamilton »

latexr wrote: post #21

The messaging is quite confusing. The title makes it seem like it took you ten years to release a first version, but the website says it’s version 3.0 and claims it’s “the leading SQL Editor […]”¹. There is a GitHub repo² but the history is quite unhelpful, with a bunch of commits named the same and some older commits after newer ones. ¹ Unless it were the only one, it would be impossible to be leading right after la…

The story is: I made a big push to open source it a few years ago but none of my users seemed to care. They mostly cared it's Free. Doing the boring work of getting the build working on github etc. doesn't seem valuable to my users vs adding functonality. I'm open to being wrong so I opened an issue and if anyone comments, I will open source at least one file for each comment: https://github.com/timeseries/qstudio/issues/43

Some people judge project quality by commit number. The empty commits I did generate as I believe it more closely resembles the effort and commits that have been put into the project than if I left it on 10 commits starting 2 years ago.

Re: Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

#55

Post by RyanHamilton »

PaulHoule wrote: post #12

Yet to find one of these (Microsoft SQL's query editor, Oracle's query editor, DBeaver, pgadmin 4) that I really like. The basic problem I have is that the structure of the typical relational db which uses primary and foreign keys (even if they aren't declared) is a graph. A user interface that lets me pick out individual tables and columns for one little query tab which gets lost in a sea of tabs just doesn’t cut it…

It's interesting to hear your perspective thanks. FYI there is no need to save before shutdown. I stole notepad++s excellent idea of autosaving regularly.

Edit: Actually your description reminded me of jailer: https://github.com/Wisser/Jailer Does that do what you want?

Re: Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

#56

Post by RyanHamilton »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #23
Svetlitski wrote: post #9

I have a genuine question, intended in good faith: why? Why spend 10 years working on this, only to give it way for free?

So they can collect your email address for marketing purposes. OXKCD#792

Yes, you are correct. though I individually email people and historically it's only been people that use one particular database and that work in one sector (Finance). I have corporate paying users for one niche database that allows me to make it free for all others.

Re: Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

#57

Post by RyanHamilton »

iamleppert wrote: post #44

What's the ROI on building a free SQL editor in 10 years?

Ha Terrible! I don't recommend it at all but it's a great feeling of satisfaction when I walk into a random office and see someone using it. Or more rarely when someone emails thanks.

Re: Show HN: 10 Years to Build a Free SQL Editor

#59

Post by RyanHamilton »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #36

Congratulations, 10 years is an impressive effort. With regards to the AI capabilities, there is a lot more opportunity hidden besides text-to-SQL generation like query validation, fixing, optimziation, data generation etc. Perhaps these generators can inspire you: https://www.sqlai.ai/app

Have you seen much end user feedback on the usefulness of this area? I only just added the AI functionality but even using it myself, I'm still unsure if I will keep using it longer term. Mostly I just use i tto spit out a few sample queries when I'm playing with a new data set.
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