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Retool Database

retool.com

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Re: Retool Database

#31

Post by richarlidad »

antonybello wrote: post #10
calvinmorrison wrote: post #2

I think Retool is awesome - though last time I think I didn't see a way to allow clients to have access to certain views. We have some databases we'd love to generate views for client access, but we don't need them to have full blown accounts. Is that something on the horizon?

(PM at Retool) Yes! We recently shipped Retool Embed to enable you to build settings pages, dashboards, and UIs in Retool and embed them securely into your client-facing apps. You can learn more about Embed here and sign up for the beta: https://retool.com/products/embed We’re also working on a solution to let you build full-stack client portals in Retool. I’m antony@retool.com if you want to chat!

I think this will be a killer feature - thanks guys

Re: Retool Database

#33

Post by nyadesu »

dblooman wrote: post #9

Are there good video resources for Retool in general, I looked at some youtube videos and found mostly creating a basic database view with a form. Any more substantial examples?

I've had a pretty good experience with retool but its component library definitely needs more documentation, as a frontend developer I'm able to go through all those props and tinker a bit until I get something done, but it's time consuming and not intuitive at first glance.

An example of this is the Table components, which allows you to create columns and set them a specific type, but that component documentation page doesn't include a section about which column types are allowed and how they work. Even further, there's a column type called Tag that it's available for us to use, but we don't have documentation about it and Tag documentation isn't helpful either,

It wouldn't hurt to add some common examples like a storybook along some way to let us see how to configure the components like that, or json examples we can import into our projects.

Re: Retool Database

#35

Post by [deleted] »

_fat_santa wrote: post #30

I think building this as a tool on top of Postgres was a very good idea. Is there anything special Retool DB does on top of Postgres or is it basically just a nice UI for interacting with your tables?

[deleted]

Re: Retool Database

#36

Post by kwhinnery »

nyadesu wrote: post #33
dblooman wrote: post #9

Are there good video resources for Retool in general, I looked at some youtube videos and found mostly creating a basic database view with a form. Any more substantial examples?

I've had a pretty good experience with retool but its component library definitely needs more documentation, as a frontend developer I'm able to go through all those props and tinker a bit until I get something done, but it's time consuming and not intuitive at first glance. An example of this is the Table components, which allows you to create columns and set them a specific type, but that component documentation pa…

Absolutely agree, and something we were discussing today as it happens on the docs crew. We have some ideas we'll try in the next few months to bring more docs directly into the product, and beef up coverage and examples in the component docs.

Re: Retool Database

#37

Post by dmarble »

ithrow wrote: post #5
sikan_ wrote: post #4

Hi HN! I’m the lead engineer on Retool Database. Spreadsheets are often used as “poor man’s databases”—they’re quick to get started, but fall apart when you need data integrity, validation, and the ability to query/filter data. This is why I am so excited about this launch - Retool Database gives you the power of Postgres with the “getting started” speed of a spreadsheet. No setup required. We've also spent a lot of…

Can Retool Database be self-hosted stand-alone without Retool? I can see using this as a replacement for excel on some things.

Check out:

NocoDB (https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb) - works w/ MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite, MariaDB

Baserow (https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow) - PostgreSQL based

APITable (https://github.com/apitable/apitable) - MySQL based

Re: Retool Database

#38

Post by sikan_ »

winrid wrote: post #28
sikan_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't do anything automatic like that (yet?), you will have to add indexes manually. But I would have to say - modern day databases are so fast that you probably won't notice the performance of adding indexes until at least 100k+ rows in a table and/or you have very high read throughput on that particular table.

You'll see a performance benefit way before 100k rows depending on the size of each row, especially with sorting. It might save you guys a ton of CPU hosting wise, depending on how this all works, to track slow queries and auto add indexes. Way worth the write overhead in most cases.

Ah yes if you need sorting then indexed are def the way to go!

Re: Retool Database

#39

Post by sikan_ »

_fat_santa wrote: post #30

I think building this as a tool on top of Postgres was a very good idea. Is there anything special Retool DB does on top of Postgres or is it basically just a nice UI for interacting with your tables?

Nothing special under the hood!

Re: Retool Database

#40

Post by kwhinnery »

anyfactor wrote: post #27
dblooman wrote: post #9

Are there good video resources for Retool in general, I looked at some youtube videos and found mostly creating a basic database view with a form. Any more substantial examples?

I wish retool produced more tutorial videos. There is this one operation, I have been trying to do for couple of weeks. There are some URLs on a table, I want to select them and I want to make an API call to the selected URLs. There are a few discussions on their community website and all point to one documentation piece. I still haven't figured out how to do this. I don't want open a thread because I know I am going…

Sorry to hear this has been challenging - were you trying to do something like this, where you select a row in the table, and then make another API request with data from that row?

https://retoolhacks.retool.com/embedded/public/17eebce9-96f3...

If this is close to what you're looking for, you can import this sample app from this JSON export:

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/kwhinnery/4fed2a80788f429...

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