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Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?

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Re: Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?

#101
post #89

I love Metabase ( https://www.metabase.com/ ) and used it successfully with business users, too (small hedge fund). If it's not too much data, getting it out as .csv and using R + data.table + dplyr, etc; = incredible productivity. See [1] Use Excel, QlikSense and Tableau if Business Users need visualization. Excel pivot tables = OG data reshaping. Resist more complicated solutions : do you really need more than Exce…

Metabase is fantastic for this use case.

Create a read replica, deploy metabase, connect it, start building visualizations. Or use the X-ray auto analysis feature to generate a bunch of mostly useful visualizations with a single click.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?

#103
post #39
post #10

This may be an unpopular opinion, but if you have US$70/mo to spare, it's hard to beat Tableau for this exact use case. "Connect to an arbitrary database, create a view that joins numerous tables (including foreign tables, via blending) together, load to columnar storage on a local SSD for performance if necessary, add arbitrary derived columns (including well-defined lateral lookups for things like 'annotate this ac…

Tableau is my go-to too. People think of Tableau as a dashboarding tool (and it is), but it's actually a multidimensional exploratory data analysis tool. You can visualize more than 3 dimensions by way of colors, labels, sizes, etc. You can slice and dice your data and visualize it in so many different ways, and also do drill-downs and filters and aggregations in different ways. The downside is that you have to reall…

Tableau is a webapp version of basically SAS JMP, especially the plotting engine. So easy to create plots - literally 100x faster than matplotlib. I can drag things faster than I can type.

Tableau is really amazing actually.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?

#104

Metabase is what you're looking for. https://metabase.com/

That looks great, but AGPL makes everyone nervous.

They have a commercial license, but just using an AGPL product doesn't mean you must AGPL your project.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks great, but AGPL makes everyone nervous.

Curious more than anything. If your intent is to use the tool as opposed to importing the tool as a feature or product, is the AGPL a problem? Also, "everyone nervous" is an interesting choice of words - I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't really care one way or the other. What is it about AGPL that causes stress among the masses?

> Also, "everyone nervous" is an interesting choice of words - I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't really care one way or the other. What is it about AGPL that causes stress among the masses?

Things like Google's AGPL internal policy[1] existing as a public piece of corporate-friendly IP propaganda have snowballed into a lot of FUD about the license.

People like to parrot perceived and secondhand opinions about the AGPL, and "some companies don't like the AGPL" transformed into "the AGPL makes everyone nervous."

[1] https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

Re: Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?

#106
post #19

No plots and statistics (well, maybe, but I've not used them if there are there). But DBeaver is nice to browse a database. For SQLite databases, I use sqlitebrowser. Both tools are open source.

DBeaver is my choice. Saw it being used at Re:Invent by a presenter a few years back and switched immediately. I had been using SQLDeveloper and don't miss it one bit.

Same here, it's solid and consistent.

Re: Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?

#107
post #30

Reverse question: What tool do you use to get data into the database? Google Forms is great, but if you want the data to go into your own database what tools are available?

Full Convert can copy data between over 40 database formats. https://www.spectralcore.com/fullconvert

Disclosure: I am the Spectral Core CEO (and author of Full Convert).

Re: Ask HN: Tools to visualize data in SQL databases?

#109
post #71

Since superset, metabase and redash was mentioned, I'll share some development insights regarding these OSS projects. Note, I've never used these solutions before, so I can't speak to their quality, but I can speak to how active and invested they appear to be. Looking at recently merged pull requests that were less than 120 days old, apache/superset had 89 unique authors, which is very high, as the following shows: h…

With Redash, their team was aqui-hired by Databricks in June 2020 (https://blog.redash.io/redash-joins-databricks/).

They gave their SaaS subscribers a bunch of notice that it was being wound up, and some Redash Community members have picked up some of the load for hosting those customers.

Development of the main Redash repo though... has an uncertain future. There are people (Community members) improving things, and they seem to be getting shepherded/directly decently well by Jesse (was full time Redash employee).

So, things are ticking along. It might go really well and grow over time, or it might not. Not yet sure. Hopefully it does go well though. :)

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