[HN Gopher] Undb - Private first, unified, self-hosted no code d...
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       Undb - Private first, unified, self-hosted no code database
        
       Author : nichenqin
       Score  : 127 points
       Date   : 2023-06-20 14:34 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | alfanick wrote:
       | I'm trying to understand what am I looking at. MS Access like
       | db+ui in browser, with homemade engine and no sql support? What
       | are guarantees here, concurenncy, isolation, single user? Not
       | much on the main page.
        
         | nichenqin wrote:
         | Undb handles reference for you, which is always most
         | hard/difficult part to handle in most lowcode system, so it's
         | not just a database frontend. It's like MS access when you link
         | reference in the access ui, but undb can also handle lookup &
         | rollup in browser
        
           | RadiozRadioz wrote:
           | GP didn't ask about references. They asked what the tool
           | actually was, and asked about the types of guarantees it
           | provides compared to a known RDBMS.
        
             | nichenqin wrote:
             | I got it. And in my opinion the most value undb provide is
             | to handle the reference part which you always have to impl
             | in code when you use traditional RDBMS. Also it provides
             | typed api, real-time sub and user friendly views
        
         | mftb wrote:
         | DB engine appears to be sqlite. It's in the tags on the main
         | page and there's a file full of sql to create what looks like a
         | sample db in the data/ dir.
        
           | naushit wrote:
           | Would prefer mainline DB engine like Postgres or MySQL
        
             | aae42 wrote:
             | why?
        
             | adr1an wrote:
             | Check baserow.io then ;)
        
           | alfanick wrote:
           | Sqlite is fine, could we call this product somehow
           | differently? I don't feel it's database, it's database
           | frontend or smth.
        
             | nichenqin wrote:
             | You are right, it's not a database, so I call it undb :P
        
         | kidfiji wrote:
         | From what I can gather, it looks to be somewhat of a self-
         | hosted alternative to Airtable
        
       | whalesalad wrote:
       | Any performance numbers? For instance how might this handle 1M+
       | records, 15+ columns in a single table?
        
         | nichenqin wrote:
         | I tried 60,000 records and 20 columns and display in fe on my
         | Mac in 4 seconds, not a official benchmark but sqlite have
         | impressive performance
        
         | bram2w wrote:
         | If you're looking for a performant no-code database, you might
         | want to try Baserow. It's made to scale, and can handle 1M+
         | rows with 15+ fields. More information about this topic can be
         | found in our 1.17 release blog post here
         | https://baserow.io/blog/1-17-release-of-baserow. Disclaimer:
         | I'm the founder of Baserow.
        
       | resoluteteeth wrote:
       | This looks pretty neat and I might try it out for personal stuff.
       | 
       | That said, in comparison to other similar software:
       | 
       | - For standalone use: there's a lot of similar software like
       | budibase, baserow, nocodb, etc. which is heavier weight
       | (distributed as a docker container) but more featureful
       | 
       | - For use with a custom frontend: I'm not sure I would pick it
       | when it's AGPL, since PocketBase is roughly comparable as a
       | single-file sqlite-based backend and it's MIT license.
        
         | nichenqin wrote:
         | thanks for you feedback, there is more feature on our roadmap
         | and it will always be local friendly and easy to host. I'll
         | consider to switch undb to MIT someday.
        
           | appleflaxen wrote:
           | If you license APL you can always offer MIT (or even
           | proprietary) for a fee.
        
       | rekttrader wrote:
       | Like pocketbase sorta...
        
       | catapart wrote:
       | This is pretty cool! I'm not sure what I would use it for, but it
       | seems like it's definitely useful.
       | 
       | I've been in the midst of developing my own frontend (SPA/PWA)
       | data storage solution, using IndexedDB (and the Dexie library),
       | so I've been watching all of the recent announcements about the
       | wasm-sqlite implementations and wondering if I should probably
       | just switch over to that. If, for nothing else, for the
       | exportable .sqlite file that would be available without having to
       | do a custom "Database Export".
       | 
       | With that in mind, I'd be much more interested in a clean library
       | that abstracts sqlite data access, but stores it in the same
       | format. That way, I could implement the library in my frontend
       | app to store data, and then use the sqlite files that can be
       | exported to load into your Undb app to inspect them (I'm thinking
       | for, say, error debugging or whatever). Similar to how I might
       | pull a client's db backup and load it into Microsoft's SSMS
       | management app.
       | 
       | But hey, maybe that's in the roadmap! And, even if not, it's
       | still a great utility all on its own. And it seems to be a
       | solidly made and well-styled app. Very interested to see if other
       | people have some obvious use cases for this.
        
         | nichenqin wrote:
         | I like your idea!
        
       | bram2w wrote:
       | It seems like they literally use the content from the Baserow
       | website on their homepage. "Create your own online database
       | without technical experience. Our user friendly no-code tool
       | gives you the powers of a developer without leaving your
       | browser."
        
       | flas9sd wrote:
       | I've been looking at and trying the class of easy to host, api-
       | fied db/table frontend tools for a while. Clicking around your
       | demo the sought-after functionality is there and the roadmap
       | looks promising, good job!
       | 
       | Some ui-breakpoints for a mobile view on tables are missing and
       | not yet catalogued in the issue tracker. Use-case: string
       | searching a table on the go.
        
       | msavio wrote:
       | That looks interesting!
       | 
       | I currently use NocoDB with a MariaDB database, so I can't easily
       | switch over as Undb doesn't support MySQL as I see. But it has
       | the feature I'm missing in NocoDB: a Calendar View which funnily
       | NocoDB promoted on their website but doesn't have [1]. I guess
       | I'll give it a try!
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb/discussions/832
        
         | rnavi wrote:
         | Noco Founder here
         | 
         | We just managed to handle all date time and timezone issues
         | which is quite complicated and made a release like a month ago.
         | When we started, we could not have anticipated the difficulties
         | surrounding timezone issues. So we will be getting to Calendar
         | view soon.
        
       | josephcsible wrote:
       | Thank you for going with the AGPLv3 as your license!
        
       | jzb wrote:
       | I love the idea of an Airtable/Notion open source alternative,
       | but I haven't seen any projects yet that look like a solid long-
       | term bet.
       | 
       | NocoDB is neat, but looks like it's a single vendor-driven
       | project that could go open core or die altogether if funding
       | dries up.
       | 
       | Baserow also looks good, but already appears to be open core and
       | another single-vendor project.
       | 
       | Undb _might_ be a more community driven project over time. Hard
       | to say - it looks like there 's 6 contributors currently and
       | there's not much info I could find by way of governance or
       | company info to determine where they want to go.
       | 
       | Single-vendor open core (SVOC) can move quickly but it tends to
       | degrade and disappoint over time. I would love to see a project
       | of this sort that's actually trying to be truly community driven.
       | 
       | That's probably unrealistic, but I don't know if there's a ton of
       | value in an open core solution over just using Airtable or Notion
       | if some of the best bits are closed anyway and the fully closed
       | alternatives are more polished and straightforward.
        
         | computomatic wrote:
         | Regarding the inevitable degradation of open core, is your
         | experience that they get actively worse or just stale? How
         | would you balance that against something that's good enough
         | today for what you need today? (Ie, is being good enough today
         | enough signal that it will stay good enough in the future if
         | requirements don't expand?)
        
       | mgaunard wrote:
       | It's funny how people put funny names on the concept of a
       | spreadsheet nowadays
        
       | rflxdev wrote:
       | Love the SvelteKit usage, good job on that departament
        
         | nichenqin wrote:
         | I spent about two weeks to migrate from old code from react
         | (nextjs) to sveltekit and I feel svelte is so easy to use and
         | promising.
        
       | smusamashah wrote:
       | I think I broke something. Made a table named pics, attached 2
       | random images and now clicking the table shows just the row
       | numbers. Everything else is blank, no rows visible, just the
       | indexes.
        
         | nichenqin wrote:
         | Will find out the bug and fix it
        
       | nico wrote:
       | This is awesome. Reminds me of Access. So many people need this
       | that don't know they need it
        
         | nichenqin wrote:
         | I'm a big fan of Ms access!
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-20 23:01 UTC)