Live data from Hacker News

Postgres.app

postgresapp.com

71–80 of 158 posts

Re: Postgres.app

#71
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up postgres.app for my wife, who's a PM. She used it to crunch data that was too big for Excel, her previous tool of choice.

I'm curious, why postgres.app and not SQLite? I'd usually reach for SQLite as my next step up from Excel, but maybe that's wrong (it's very possible that you're talking about an order of magnitude more data than I am).

Not the OP but I never found a good GUI for SQLite. Postico is a fantastic GUI for Postgres. I’ll admit it’s been a very long time since I’ve looked, though.

Re: Postgres.app

#72
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using SQLite in production too? I'm curious about your domain - is it a web application or something else?

We do use it in production. Have been for years. We use it as part of the back-end of a business workflow automation system. Handles 100-1000 concurrent users without any issues.

Thanks for the details.

I would be afraid to use SQLite over Postgres as SQLite is much more... flexible with it's database constraints (or at least, this used to be the case).

Not knocking your engineering choices - if you've been running it in prod for years, then it's working for you - just interested.

Do you lean into DB constraints much or do you do more application level checking/enforcement?

Re: Postgres.app

#73

I've always preferred Docker for setting up databases and database-like services on a development machine because then everything is nicely isolated. i.e no need to worry about random files in /etc/foo, easy to setup many versions per project etc. This is what I've been using for Postgres: docker volume create postgres docker run -d \ -p 127.0.0.1:5432:5432 \ -v postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data \ --name postgres \ -…

I love using Docker Compose in theory, but I've found it really difficult to do local development with a "Docker only" setup on Mac, due to the performance issues with the filesystem layer (even when using cached volumes, etc). Ruby gemfiles and node_modules are big culprits here, since they involve a lot of filesystem accesses to load/install dependencies. It might be more manageable if I was just using Postgres fro…

I personally just .dockerignore the node_modules directory and run the front end outside of docker, but still get all the benefits of backend isolation, databases and caching layers via docker-compose, etc.

Re: Postgres.app

#74
post #54
post #52

I love postgres.app, such a great solution. It always bothered me though that https://postgres.app would just 404 whenever I'd go to look up the docs or go to install on a new machine. Hopefully a few other people have had their lives made a tiny bit easier by the redirect I set up.

That's really nice of you, thanks!

[see reply]~~~I'm sure it's done with the best of intentions, but, alternatively, it's squatting, MITMing, etc. and the server should probably be rejecting requests not for the official 'postgresapp.com' hostname?

(Maybe there's not really any attack here - though downloads? - but imagine 'pay.pal' or something. AFAIK servers should be configured only to permit intended hosts, they allow '*' but I don't know when that's what you want?)~~~

Re: Postgres.app

#75
post #35

For a really nice client for macOS see Postico: https://eggerapps.at/postico/ (not affiliated, just a fan)

Postico is the only application I miss from the days when I developed exclusively on the mac.

To be fair, I use (and like) TablePlus, but it's no Postico...

Re: Postgres.app

#76
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up postgres.app for my wife, who's a PM. She used it to crunch data that was too big for Excel, her previous tool of choice.

I'm curious, why postgres.app and not SQLite? I'd usually reach for SQLite as my next step up from Excel, but maybe that's wrong (it's very possible that you're talking about an order of magnitude more data than I am).

On the whole I've found that the tooling around postgres/postgis is always slightly better. Most other people publising scripts and tools for doing various types of analysis also seem to use postgres/postgis so it's more likely to be able to borrow someone else's good idea. Postgres/PostGIS has a whole bunch of features and commands that sqlite/spatialite don't have and even if don't think I'll need them it's always nice to have the option.

And since installing and setting up Postges on windows and mac is just a single download and double-click these days, there really isn't a good reason not to do so.

Re: Postgres.app

#77
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love using Docker Compose in theory, but I've found it really difficult to do local development with a "Docker only" setup on Mac, due to the performance issues with the filesystem layer (even when using cached volumes, etc). Ruby gemfiles and node_modules are big culprits here, since they involve a lot of filesystem accesses to load/install dependencies. It might be more manageable if I was just using Postgres fro…

You could look into Nix for Ruby and Nodejs. I'm not a particularly experienced Ruby developer, but having Nix take care of all versioning and dependencies for me made the whole ecosystem really accessible (in the sense that I don't need to care about most of it). Everything is still in your filesystem so there shouldn't be any performance issues, and you still get the isolation benefits from Docker (like versions an…

You mean Nix as a base image?

Re: Postgres.app

#78
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up postgres.app for my wife, who's a PM. She used it to crunch data that was too big for Excel, her previous tool of choice.

I'm curious, why postgres.app and not SQLite? I'd usually reach for SQLite as my next step up from Excel, but maybe that's wrong (it's very possible that you're talking about an order of magnitude more data than I am).

They’re both easy. For someone who’s never touched Terminal.app, I figured something packaged like a standard Mac app would be easier to work with.

Re: Postgres.app

#79
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could look into Nix for Ruby and Nodejs. I'm not a particularly experienced Ruby developer, but having Nix take care of all versioning and dependencies for me made the whole ecosystem really accessible (in the sense that I don't need to care about most of it). Everything is still in your filesystem so there shouldn't be any performance issues, and you still get the isolation benefits from Docker (like versions an…

You mean Nix as a base image?

No, Nix installed in your system.

Re: Postgres.app

#80
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Nix as a base image?

No, Nix installed in your system.

I don't know much about Nix.

But is there really any isolation if it's installed on your host os? I always thought Nix was primarily a package management tool. Like brew?

Docker isolation is different.

Post reply on HN