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Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

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Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#61
post #2

I’m honestly really blown away by this. Are there other such tools out there that do a similar thing?

https://dbeaver.io/ is an open source tool with community and commercial builds that's quite mature and capable. I don't like SQL or database administration very much so it's become my go-to utility if I need to look at an unfamiliar DB. I've never had any problems with it though I keep a copy of SQL workbench around as it seems to perform better on large projects.

dBeaver is awesome and the best thing its free and open source. There is enterprise version tat includes NoSQL databases and some other stuff.

It also has vertical row view (swith by using TAB) that is great help when when you have lots of columns.

If they ever add option to join columns like this app, it could pretty much replace it.

Metabase is another one.

Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#62
post #15

I've been using Hasura and TablePlus a lot lately, and actually wished for something that combines them. Hasura is great at understanding relations and making joins feel effortless and TablePlus is so good at making table editing feel as fast as excel. This looks like it's the thing, with some extra power thrown on top (formulas and nested layouts are nice!). The UI looks drab, but maybe that's ok? It means the funct…

You should take a look at Directus [0]. It's much lighter than Hasura.

[0] https://directus.io/

Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#64
Man this looks amazing. I've been wondering why something like this doesn't exist yet - or at least with this level of quality.

An alternative I use is Jailer[1]. It's great but can be quite confusing to use so I hope this takes off.

[1] https://wisser.github.io/Jailer/

Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#65
post #15

I've been using Hasura and TablePlus a lot lately, and actually wished for something that combines them. Hasura is great at understanding relations and making joins feel effortless and TablePlus is so good at making table editing feel as fast as excel. This looks like it's the thing, with some extra power thrown on top (formulas and nested layouts are nice!). The UI looks drab, but maybe that's ok? It means the funct…

You should take a look at Directus [0]. It's much lighter than Hasura. [0] https://directus.io/

Hasura is a rock solid piece of software that does pretty much exactly the right thing for me. Performance exceeds expectations and it's never once crashed or been the source of a bug in years of use. "lighter" is not convincing. Directus looks cool in the CMS/no-code space, but as a backend API hub I don't see anything there that would tempt me over hasura.

Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#66
post #2

I’m honestly really blown away by this. Are there other such tools out there that do a similar thing?

I've been writing SQL for so long it's second nature. I have tried these GUI tools from time to time but for me, nothing beats just writing SQL in a text-mode window. I use emacs and whichever sql mode is appropriate for the database I'm working with. If I don't understand the data model well enough to know how to write joins to get what I need, I have never found that a GUI helps me very much.

I think one big advantage of GUIs is safety. There's no shortage of people who accidentally typed a bad command in production.

GUIs usually don't let you operate on anything you can't see, so it's harder to do the wrong thing by selecting something without looking at it.

Like with dd, you can type /dev/sdWrongDrive and never see anything about the device. With a GUI you will click a button that says "Root Device: 67GB free of 128GB" and instantly see it is not your blank SD card.

Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been writing SQL for so long it's second nature. I have tried these GUI tools from time to time but for me, nothing beats just writing SQL in a text-mode window. I use emacs and whichever sql mode is appropriate for the database I'm working with. If I don't understand the data model well enough to know how to write joins to get what I need, I have never found that a GUI helps me very much.

I think one big advantage of GUIs is safety. There's no shortage of people who accidentally typed a bad command in production. GUIs usually don't let you operate on anything you can't see, so it's harder to do the wrong thing by selecting something without looking at it. Like with dd, you can type /dev/sdWrongDrive and never see anything about the device. With a GUI you will click a button that says "Root Device: 67G…

I have not seen a GUI tool of this sort that is substantially safer than a command line tool. If you're letting users do things like deleting or altering production data with any kind of ad-hoc tool, you've got a bigger issue than what the specific tool is.

Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one big advantage of GUIs is safety. There's no shortage of people who accidentally typed a bad command in production. GUIs usually don't let you operate on anything you can't see, so it's harder to do the wrong thing by selecting something without looking at it. Like with dd, you can type /dev/sdWrongDrive and never see anything about the device. With a GUI you will click a button that says "Root Device: 67G…

I have not seen a GUI tool of this sort that is substantially safer than a command line tool. If you're letting users do things like deleting or altering production data with any kind of ad-hoc tool, you've got a bigger issue than what the specific tool is.

Judging by meme threads, and comments on them, it seems like unfortunately nobody got the memo that it's a bad idea.

The usual issues are things like a select without a WHERE, least with a GUI, the tool can ideally do a select before any modifications happen, and say "You're about to affect 39482 rows out of 39482 total".

I suppose you could do things like parsing the SQL, figuring out the intent, and generating the select call, and throwing an error if it can't pre-check things on the CLI, but GUIs also have a speed bump effect that keeps the confident power user types from moving faster than their heads, and different expectations.

People seem to expect command line tools not to have layers and layers of confirmations and hoops to jump through, and the people who want this stuff probably prefer a GUI.

Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#69

Awesome tool the UI is really smart. Shameless plug: I built a similar, web-based tool for exploring a database at www.human.software

The sign up button does not seem to work so I was not able to try it. Also, the FAQ's on the home page are gibberish.

Thank you for taking the time to check it out tacotime :-)

I'm looking into why sign up didn't work for you, the UX where I allow people to sign up and sign in with the same UI might be at fault here (I don't see any failed signups in the backend). I will simplify it and update the FAQ. Grateful for your feedback.

Re: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video]

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sign up button does not seem to work so I was not able to try it. Also, the FAQ's on the home page are gibberish.

Thank you for taking the time to check it out tacotime :-) I'm looking into why sign up didn't work for you, the UX where I allow people to sign up and sign in with the same UI might be at fault here (I don't see any failed signups in the backend). I will simplify it and update the FAQ. Grateful for your feedback.

Signup fixed, now updating the FAQ
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