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Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

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Re: Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

#71

Post by pavish »

nickreese wrote: post #69
nickreese wrote: post #68

Wow, this is the best explanation of db relationship types I've seen. https://capture.dropbox.com/A3a1aybKNDy1ttEx Really polished. Congrats on the launch!

Tried tossing in some of the datasets found here: https://data.cms.gov/provider-data/archived-data/nursing-hom... and none of the file uploads worked. Either way, really stoked for this.

We tested importing the files from the link and right on, some of the imported tables do not seem to work as expected. You've just helped us discover a bug.

Here's the issue that tracks it: https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar/issues/2634

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

#72

Post by victorbjorklund »

mathemancer wrote: post #67
victorbjorklund wrote: post #65

Looks really nice. Is there any way to export an exploration as SQL? I guess this can be useful when creating complicated views etc.

Not at the moment, but it is in our roadmap[1]. In fact, we're planning to help users start or tinker with data explorer, then switch to an SQL editor starting from their exploration so far. That way, they can use features or queries beyond what we currently support in the GUI. [1] https://mathesar.org/roadmap.html

Awesome! Looks great!

Re: Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

#73

Post by kgodey »

hultner wrote: post #66
mathemancer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that we have some work to do on access control. In fact, we have setting up Mathesar users with the 1:1 database user mapping in our roadmap[1]. Assuming you're referring to the Database super user as being a problem, we also have giving more granular control over that to the installer in the future. I completely understand reluctance to give a webapp super user access to a production database. [1] https://ma…

Very nice to hear, I will follow your project. One of the projects I was thinking about is financial systems used by government actors such as correctional services. For these customers there’s strong legal requirements for data handling so a database super user with full access is a big no-no even for the most trusted developers internally.

We completely understand. We want to have the ability for Mathesar to gracefully handle DB users with different permissions (i.e. we'd disable features in the UI based on the permissions of the DB user set up during installation), but we couldn't get that done in time for launch. We'll continue working on this.

Re: Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

#74

Post by kgodey »

x98asfd wrote: post #63
dmos62 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might do well to add to the script a more in-depth explanation of why elevated privileges are needed. We did take care to not run the whole script as sudo, but only parts of it (always read a script before giving it privileges!). So elevated privileges are needed because we're installing using Docker Compose and you can't use Docker without some form of elevated privileges (most people always run it with sudo). Ma…

Thanks for the explanation. Is there a way to NOT use docker. For those of us who are NOT on linux, and are quite comfortable with postgres install and running. Would prefer just a postgres connection string.

To add to what silentninja said, we are already deploying Mathesar without Docker on some test servers, we just need to document our setup. Coming soon!

Re: Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

#75

Post by kgodey »

ryan_platofy wrote: post #51
pavish wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! We've documented the differences between Mathesar and other similar products including NocoDB on the FAQ section[1] in our website. [1] https://mathesar.org/faq.html#how-is-mathesar-different-from...

Apologies, somehow missed that. Thanks for the speedy response. Your explanation is very clear. Something that is keeping me tied to Airtable is their 'interface designer'. Allows for rapidly building internal admin tools. Something similar is apparently on NocoDB's roadmap (they are calling it page designer I believe). Am I correct in saying that this not something that is on your current Roadmap (had a look, but di…

To add to what Pavish said: Our designer is excited about building an Airtable-like interface designer, but there's a lot of complexity involved, and it will cater to a whole different category of users. We want to get our current features to a more stable state before jumping into that. It's definitely on our radar, though.

Re: Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

#77

Post by kgodey »

TeeWEE wrote: post #44
iambcam wrote: post #26

I'm sorry if this question is stupid, I'm still learning a little about technology. The little bit of knowledge I have tells me that my product team shouldn't directly access the same production database as my application. The idea for this product would be to create a copy of my production base and give access to it through this tool? Wouldn't the cost of this replica be too expensive?

You’re actually right. You don’t want people to edit the DB or schema in this manner. Schema migrations should go via CI/CD and data changes via your app. Otherwise it’s gets messy indeed.

Mathesar is designed to be used for a bunch of different types of use cases.

I agree you shouldn't allow users to change the schema if you're connecting Mathesar to a production database (that would mess a lot of things up!) We've designed our user roles to account for this – you would assign "Editor" permissions to users, and they can only edit data, but not change anything related to the structure.

On the other hand, if you're using Mathesar as your primary tool to work with your data, it's really nice to be able to change the schema to align with changes in your mental models or workflows.

Re: Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

#79

Post by kgodey »

nickreese wrote: post #68

Wow, this is the best explanation of db relationship types I've seen. https://capture.dropbox.com/A3a1aybKNDy1ttEx Really polished. Congrats on the launch!

Thank you very much! We found that a lot of similar "relational database" tools ended up not actually using foreign keys for relationships because they are difficult to explain to non-technical users. We took that as a UX challenge. :). The power of relational databases comes from the relationships, so we want to help users understand and use them.

Re: Show HN: Mathesar – open-source collaborative UI for Postgres databases

#80

Post by kgodey »

winrid wrote: post #34

Was just thinking about how it looks like a fancy Django Admin Then I saw - its actually built on Django! Neat. :)

Thanks! We are currently using a freakish mix of Django and SQLAlchemy, but we're aiming to simplify that soon-ish (by removing SQLAlchemy).
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