DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux) • Hacker News Board

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#21

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:31 AM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #12

Another similar open source app is DBeaver: https://dbeaver.io/ Works with more than just SQLite.

I’d need to use DBeaver Pro for the work I do - but they don’t offer perpetual licensing - which is a deal-killer for me (EDIT: I originally incorrectly claimed they didn’t support offline-installs, but apparently they do - but only for installs with a 12-month built-in timebomb: https://dbeaver.com/license-types/ )

It says “No monthly subscription” which really just means “Annual subscription” instead: https://dbeaver.com/edition/

It’s not that I don’t think it’s worth $500/yr - I’d actually be happy to pay $1000 or more - but I absolutely need a pain+hassle-free UX that I can drag around air-gapped networks - and install on a legacy Windows 2003 VM running an ancient build of Sybase and then forget about it for 3-5 years, but be able to RDP-in and know that my DB tooling is still going to be there, unchanged, reliable and dependable.

…whereas subscription desktop software with deeply integrated online accounts and activation and mandatory updates every few weeks (and the occasional account system outage, which ruins everything (looking at you, GitKraken) really really does not work well in those kinds (…my kinds) of environment.

——-

SaaS as a business-model for online services is fine; great, even; and I’m not even opposed to it for desktop software provided that it delivers more value and overall UX quality compared to how-we-did-things-before - but SaaS companies don’t have a solution to the problem of ultra-long-life’d, ultra-dependable, server/system administration tooling.

Can you imagine if Bash or Zsh - or phpMyAdmin - or systemd had to phone-home for a new OAuth access-token every month?

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#22

Post by lucydodo » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 4:39 AM UTC

Hello Hacker News! I'm one of the maintainers of this project.

Thank you for featuring our project here, and we will be releasing a new stable version soon, so stay tuned for the new version! If you have any further comments, suggestions, or questions about the project, please feel free to leave an issue in our repository! Thank you.

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#23

Post by gvkhna » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 5:20 AM UTC

lucydodo wrote: post #22

Hello Hacker News! I'm one of the maintainers of this project. Thank you for featuring our project here, and we will be releasing a new stable version soon, so stay tuned for the new version! If you have any further comments, suggestions, or questions about the project, please feel free to leave an issue in our repository! Thank you.

Thank you for your contribution. This is a great piece of FOSS!

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#24

Post by TheDong » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:34 AM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #21

heavyset_go wrote: post #12

Another similar open source app is DBeaver: https://dbeaver.io/ Works with more than just SQLite.

I’d need to use DBeaver Pro for the work I do - but they don’t offer perpetual licensing - which is a deal-killer for me (EDIT: I originally incorrectly claimed they didn’t support offline-installs, but apparently they do - but only for installs with a 12-month built-in timebomb: https://dbeaver.com/license-types/ ) It says “No monthly subscription” which really just means “Annual subscription” instead: https://dbeav…

What feature do you need that isn't in the open source version?

Why not fork it and implement that feature, and then use that?

If you don't want to deal with a company trying to extract profit from you, use the open source version. That's the way to ensure your own freedom.

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#25

Post by lf-non » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 6:52 AM UTC

tester457 wrote: post #15

For the CLI there's litecli. It has auto-completion and syntax highlighting. https://github.com/dbcli/litecli

Nice. I use pgcli for postgres and wanted something similar for sqlite.

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#26

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 7:33 AM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #24

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d need to use DBeaver Pro for the work I do - but they don’t offer perpetual licensing - which is a deal-killer for me (EDIT: I originally incorrectly claimed they didn’t support offline-installs, but apparently they do - but only for installs with a 12-month built-in timebomb: https://dbeaver.com/license-types/ ) It says “No monthly subscription” which really just means “Annual subscription” instead: https://dbeav…

What feature do you need that isn't in the open source version? Why not fork it and implement that feature, and then use that? If you don't want to deal with a company trying to extract profit from you, use the open source version. That's the way to ensure your own freedom.

> What feature do you need that isn't in the open source version?

ODBC support, Cassandra, Redis, and Azure (Table) Storage support, and support for the kinds of obsolete RDBMS and "4GL" you see in large enterprise and small mom-and-pop backrooms (Progress, Clipper, AdvantageDB, ElevateDB, etc). And SQL script debugging for Postgres.

Currently I have separate tools/clients/IDEs for all the different data systems I target (e.g. SSMS, MySQL Workbench, Azure Storage Explorer, Azure Data Studio, Excel PowerQuery, LinqPad for .NET Framework 4.x for both x86 and x64 because ODBC and OLE-DB are like that); while I have a modest set of portable-ish VM images of obsolete Windows OS instances where I can run MS Access 2003 or some Clipper derivative. I'm also still running Firebird and even FoxPro 9 in another VM somewhere.

...so yes, having a single tool which handles 85% of my tasks without needing to juggle VMs and multiple bloated Electron apps together would be an improvement for me and worth me paying money for.

> Why not fork it and implement that feature, and then use that?

"Fork it" is not a reasonable suggestion considering the amount of work involved (see above).

> If you don't want to deal with a company trying to extract profit from you, use the open source version. That's the way to ensure your own freedom

As I said, I'm perfectly fine with me throwing money at DBeaver. I'm just expressing my frustration with DBeaver that I think they're being callous by not offering perpetual offline licenses for Dbeaver Pro, for any amount of money. The fact they used to[1] but don't anymore suggests they were getting disappointing return business from deep-pocketed "enterprise" customers, but I'm disappointed that their solution to this problem of theirs means leaving my money on the table because now they don't have any product licenses that I can work with.

[1] According to https://dbeaver.com/docs/dbeaver/Differences-between-license... - they stopped doing perpetual licenses after v23.3).

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#27

Post by lbj » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 7:53 AM UTC

Looks very nice - I'm still hard-stuck in EJC, the convenience is just unbeatable.

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#28

Post by moonshinefe » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 8:33 AM UTC

The killer feature for me with this app is the stupidly easy CSV loading. I deal with huge CSVs at work often. SQLite Browser is the easiest, fastest and most lightweight UI tool to analyze them I've tried. It can load millions of records into a table in like <3 seconds. Then obviously you can query the CSV data via SQL.

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#29

Post by xwat » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 9:19 AM UTC

The best

Re: DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)

#30

Post by digitalsankhara » Tue, Jul 09, 2024, 9:35 AM UTC

Would really like to have a dedicated DuckDB version of this please. Also, add in a few simple tools for analytics - basic chart, pivot table tool, ETL etc. Nothing fancy, just enough to scope out the data before building pipelines/reports etc.

No rush - tomorrow is fine :-)

Thanks.