[HN Gopher] NocoDB - Turn your SQL database into a Nocode platform
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       NocoDB - Turn your SQL database into a Nocode platform
        
       Author : sysadm1n
       Score  : 80 points
       Date   : 2021-11-10 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nocodb.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nocodb.com)
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Past threads:
       | 
       |  _Thank HN: A customer found us on Hacker News and wrote our
       | first angel check_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28606258 - Sept 2021 (6
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Show HN: NocoDB - Open-Source Airtable Alternative_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27303783 - May 2021 (157
       | comments)
        
       | pier25 wrote:
       | Does this work with CockroachDB?
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | We're using knexjs to connect to databases. If knexjs generally
         | works with your Cockroachdb. We should be able to work as well.
         | Please reach out on our discord for any help.
        
       | ramon wrote:
       | Have you guys seen ToolJet? https://tooljet.io/
        
       | 0x008 wrote:
       | I think the product direction holds some real value.
       | 
       | However, as a potential customer I do not know what this product
       | can do from browsing the webpage for a short a mount of time.
       | Hints like "Airtable alternative" is no use to me when I don't
       | know what Airtable is good for.
       | 
       | The Videos (as commented by other hn'ers are not really helpful
       | in showing what's going on).
        
       | transfire wrote:
       | What exactly is it good for?
        
         | orthoxerox wrote:
         | Strongly typed multiplayer Excel.
        
           | rnavi wrote:
           | That is one good way to put it :)
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | Spreadsheets has limits to number of rows/cells. And they tend
         | to corrupt after certain limit easily. Then things like
         | creating relation between sheets or deriving different views
         | are not possible/easier in spreadsheet. This is when teams
         | using spreadsheets start to move to databases. But it involves
         | a lot of effort to build a spreadsheet like product on
         | databases. This is where noco helps.
        
       | thunderrabbit wrote:
       | nocodb dev team was very generous for me when helping me evaluate
       | their product for my use case, including creating a test
       | environment to understand my request.
       | 
       | I ended up not using them, but they created an issue for me on
       | GitHub, saying my request was on their roadmap.
       | 
       | https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb/issues/580
       | 
       | Oh and they quickly researched a solution to an installation bug
       | I was experiencing.
       | 
       | https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb/issues/579
       | 
       | TL;DR: great customer service from nocodb, so I'm happy to
       | consider nocodb for future projects.
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | Hey, happy to bump in here. I've added page designer to our
         | immediate roadmap now.
        
           | thunderrabbit wrote:
           | That's great news! Thank you for the update, and nice work
           | moving things forward. :-)
        
         | petilon wrote:
         | > https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb/issues/580
         | 
         | What's a Page Designer? Do you mean forms for data entry? Or
         | report pages (read-only data)?
        
           | rnavi wrote:
           | We support Forms.
           | 
           | By page designer - its about custom reports from the data.
        
             | mistermann wrote:
             | Do you support custom layouts (including big text boxes for
             | certain fields, or at least a pop up zoom), and embeddable
             | subforms? Yes, I am basically looking for MS Access for the
             | web, and I realize I'd have to give up A LOT, but certain
             | things I just need (a gui for designing complicated forms
             | is nice to have, but not necessary, but the layout is).
        
       | carvking wrote:
       | It looks very promising - but my experience with MSSQL hasn't
       | been optimal.
       | 
       | Definitely worth keeping an eye on this project.
        
         | tailspin2019 wrote:
         | I initially read that as "you don't like MSSQL" but I guess you
         | mean using this tool _with_ MSSQL wasn't optimal?
        
         | stareatgoats wrote:
         | Assuming you are aware that NocoDB claims to support MySQL,
         | Postgres, MariaDB, SQLite as well as SQL server, what was your
         | suboptimal experience with MSSQL?
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | What was the Microsoft SQL server version ? and the issue.
        
       | thunderbong wrote:
       | From the other comments, I haven't tried tooljet
       | (https://tooljet.io) or budibase (https://budibase.com) but I did
       | have a look at those apps.
       | 
       | This, for me, was easiest to try out. And quite impressive,
       | honestly.
       | 
       | The key point was that in each table, the 'title' column (created
       | by default) has a special meaning as they show up in the join
       | columns cleanly.
       | 
       | Amazing and congratulations.
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | Thank you.
         | 
         | In noco we've the concept of primary-value (like primary key)
         | and that shows up automatically when you join with other tables
         | (defaults to 'title'). However the primary value column can be
         | changed to any other column too (by hovering on the column
         | name).
         | 
         | Other tools in the list do not give the smart-spreadsheet
         | automatically when you connect to databases. And frankly, these
         | are two different tools we are comparing.
        
         | waxdotrun wrote:
         | This has been my experience with internal tool builders too.
         | The barrier to entry is quite high to try most of them and it's
         | really hard to have a whole team test them out.
         | 
         | This adoption issue was part of the inspiration for Wax [0]
         | which lets you build internal tools on top of Google Sheets. If
         | your team is already using Sheets, it's much easier to add the
         | missing pieces there vs. pushing people to an entirely separate
         | platform.
         | 
         | 0 - https://www.wax.run/
        
       | lessname wrote:
       | What I do not like is that it tries to subscribe me to a
       | newsletter on a self hosted app (you might not recognize the
       | checkbox at the first look). And the google feedback form inside
       | the app is quite weird. Besides from that it seems quite
       | interesting, especially for non-coders.
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | Thank you for the feedback. We will have it not selected from
         | next release. Google form can be closed (right top x icon).
        
       | colbyhub wrote:
       | This is fantastic, especially as we see trends around owning your
       | data. Tools like this allow us to migrate away from proprietary
       | solutions like Airtable or Google Sheets.
       | 
       | On the other hand, I could also see this being used as somewhat
       | as an "Admin UI" for SaaS software administrators.
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | Yes, it could be easily used as Admin UI. We create a virtual
         | schema for every database that we connect to. If there are
         | schema changes done outside noco GUI - then noco has a sync
         | option that does automatically sync the changes.
        
       | cabalamat wrote:
       | The "how it works" section is just some short soundless YouTube
       | videos that don't explain what is going on. I think they need to
       | work harder on explaining their product.
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | Thank you for the input, we will work on them.
        
       | ramon wrote:
       | How does this compare to Budibase? https://budibase.com/ Budibase
       | seems to have a workflow engine as well.
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | Please see here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29179953
        
         | foxbee wrote:
         | Budibase also has a more comprehensive UI builder, internal
         | database, forms, configurable onboarding, free SSO, Kubernetes
         | support, a cloud platform, off the top of my head.
        
           | algo_trader wrote:
           | Yeah, it looks packed with features!!! Self hosted,
           | automations, hooks
           | 
           | Can it scale to B2C number of users? Are there technical
           | limitations that prevent this if we keep adding servers?
        
       | rnavi wrote:
       | (Founder here - glad to see the post)
       | 
       | NocoDB[1] is a Free & Open Source Airtable alternative that
       | transforms your own existing databases like
       | MySQL/Postgres/MsSQL/SQLite into a smart-spreadsheet.
       | 
       | Happy to answer any queries and you can also join our discord[2]
       | for any help.
       | 
       | [1] : https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb
       | 
       | [2] : https://discord.gg/5RgZmkW
        
         | ignoramous wrote:
         | [3] _Show HN: NocoDB - Open-Source Airtable Alternative_ ,
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27303783
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-10 23:01 UTC)