[HN Gopher] BeeBase, a programmable relational database with gra...
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BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user
interface
Author : LkpPo
Score : 211 points
Date : 2024-04-24 01:44 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (beebase.sourceforge.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (beebase.sourceforge.io)
| LkpPo wrote:
| Good morning,
|
| I wanted to introduce this little, unpretentious piece of
| software, which is intended as a small programmable database for
| hobbyists, like a mini Access but with a scripting language for
| those who like parentheses.
|
| Your opinions are welcome.
|
| Regards,
| psadri wrote:
| Great! This reminds me of FileMaker and similar RAD desktop
| tools. Curious to know what kind of projects people are using
| it for?
| pkphilip wrote:
| Very nice! Looks great!
|
| May I suggest that you have a "Get Started" button right on the
| home page itself with a very basic tutorial?
| SuperHeavy256 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I was looking for something just like this
| actually.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| Is there any technical docs on internals? How it does I/O,
| caching, consistency, concurrency etc.?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| that's probably not what this is aimed at. especially as most
| people have SSDs and loads[1] of ram
|
| [1] compared to the days of filemaker
| hilti wrote:
| Amiga?! Just reading this warmed my heart. Awesome project -
| congratulations!
| SuperHeavy256 wrote:
| Man, that tutorial was difficult to read. No images or GIFs?
| larodi wrote:
| Cool that it runs on Amiga. I'd love to see a local store use
| Amiga based UI for the warehouse. Also the fact it was started as
| another project in 1994 makes it double cool.
| rho4 wrote:
| How does it compare to MS Access or FileMaker?
| layer8 wrote:
| It runs on the Amiga.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Ok so first feedback. Launched app. Went to create a new table.
| Entered name : "users". Got error "Invalid name". Got confused,
| whats illegal about the name. After some time figured out that
| name must start with UPPER case latter.
|
| This could have been the error message instead of generic
| "Invalid name".
| cess11 wrote:
| It's explained on page 8 of the manual, in the tutorial
| section.
| carlmr wrote:
| Exactly, it's a bad error message if you need to read 8 pages
| of tutorial to get that basic feedback.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Its OSS, you are free to change that if you don't like it.
| jfyi wrote:
| Let's take a look at how the big boys handle something
| similar...
|
| SELECT * FROM logs WHERE KEY = 'blah' LIMIT 10;
|
| /* SQL Error (1064): You have an error in your SQL syntax;
| check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server
| version for the right syntax to use near 'KEY = 'blah'
| LIMIT 10' at line 1 */
|
| I think there is some expectation of technical literacy for
| the use of a database. This would include being able to
| familiarize yourself with naming conventions and keywords.
|
| I have personally never seen a database that gives detailed
| error messages like was requested and I'd be excited to see
| an example.
| dvdkon wrote:
| Yes, the error messages of modern SQL databases suck. On
| that note, SQL itself sucks (the two problems might be
| related). But that's no excuse to not do better. Besides,
| BeeBase seems more user-focused than MariaDB, presenting
| itself as a nice GUI tool. "Real developers" might not
| need good error messages, but they also don't need a GUI
| and would sooner use some unholy bash-sed-awk-Perl
| mixture.
| jfyi wrote:
| Are you aware of non SQL databases that give detailed
| errors?
| dvdkon wrote:
| Fair point. Databases encoding queries in JSON get some
| error messages for free, at least when it comes to
| "syntax". But I think even others do well.
|
| I just logged into Grafana and tried writing a simple
| query. Upon failing I got a reasonably detailed and
| specific error message: 'parse error: expected type range
| vector in call to function "rate", got instant vector'.
|
| I also tried XQuery in Xidel and it gave me nicely
| descriptive responses to whichever mistakes I introduced.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Comments like this are the reason why I will not touch
| software like this. I can live with the old school-style and
| the limited ability set sold on the webpage. But someone
| bringing up a legit complain and then receiving such hostile
| behavior, speaks for a toxic community or user hostile
| developers. And it's not limited to this one comment, but
| there are several collect here.
| AvieDeckard wrote:
| They simply said the information is in the manual, there
| was no hostile behavior. Please stop punching at shadows.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Yeah there's a lot of people mistaking bluntness for
| hostility here.
|
| And, at the end of the day, this is a free open source
| piece of software. The experience _could_ be improved,
| definitely, but nobody owes it to anyone to do so and
| it's important to remember that as well.
| zen928 wrote:
| The replying comment side stepped the discussion of error
| messages lacking context that could be easily remedied to
| be identifiable and the response was "it's in the
| manual". All error messages meant to be understood by
| humans should be in the manual at minimum, but what the
| replyer suggested by ignoring the conversation was "your
| issue with the error message isn't important because you
| can figure it out yourself". It's dismissive to respond
| to nuanced articulated opinions made in good faith with
| simplistic matter-of-fact answers that don't address the
| problem, which could easily be seen as a form of
| hostility in a place meant for discussion and engagement.
|
| You could argue that's not their intent or that it's the
| case of direct wording than intentionally being curt, but
| this is the second post in the chain that dismisses the
| legitimate discussion with additional redress to make
| sure you let the poster know that it's their problem
| "punching at shadows" and that their problems are
| imagined. What a shameful display of lacking empathy.
| cess11 wrote:
| It's not important because there are many quirks to this
| software, including a Lisp-like programming language.
| Learning to use it involves internalising many things
| that aren't common knowledge, which one has to figure out
| by trial and error, and the manual.
|
| If you are seriously interested in BeeBase you'll be
| spending hours learning the basics of the Lisp-dialect
| and GUI toolkit, getting a hangup on that error message
| means you don't have that kind of interest. Maybe the
| empathy got in the way of that, I don't know.
|
| And let's say someone makes a patch that implements a new
| error message that specifies which of the two rules
| regarding table names has been breached, then what? More
| complaints about the next quirk? Some other error
| message? Begging for a Lua-implemented query language
| because parens lost the syntax wars of yesteryear,
| describing it as miserable that it isn't already
| integrated?
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| > And let's say someone makes a patch that implements a
| new error message that specifies which of the two rules
| regarding table names has been breached, then what? More
| complaints about the next quirk? Some other error
| message?
|
| Yes, this is how software development is done, assuming
| you like your customers.
| cess11 wrote:
| Who are you referring to? Is it even someone in this
| thread?
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| I was quoting you, using the > sign to refer to what you
| said directly. I thought the quote was useful to
| highlight that it can be easy to have a mental
| disconnect, or even an antagonism, between developers and
| their stakeholders.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Apparently saved project created with BeeBase is basically a
| sqlite DB, that you can open with any sqlite browser. So i think
| a lot of value could come from standardised sqlite format, upon
| which you could build different UI's to manipulate the content of
| said sqlite DB and then provide a app that would build client UI
| based on content of same sqlite file.
| cess11 wrote:
| You can export to SQLite3, but not import it back in again.
| vincnetas wrote:
| What i mean is that you can save a project and just open
| saved file as sqlite file. Without need to export anything.
| That file contains all information needed for app. User data
| plus meta data used by BeeBase.
| fermuch wrote:
| No? I haven't tried it yet, but in the docs it says "SQLite3
| file format, and import and export facility"
| aitchnyu wrote:
| 30 rows from multiple tables in a 1024*786 screen (wild guess). I
| was part of a rewrite of an app, that previously crammed 30 rows
| into a small screen, and 10 rows after.
| ljsocal wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of Lotus Agenda. That never made it out of DOS
| (except in Hobbs, the unreleased prototype Windows version)
| zokier wrote:
| Honestly I think LibreOffice Base (and its brethren) are
| underappreciated and underdeveloped pieces of software these
| days. In 80s/90s stuff like dBase and Access seemingly were
| relatively popular, but that whole category of software seems to
| have mostly died out which is imho a shame. I suppose Access
| being somewhat notoriously horrible has something to do with
| that, suffocating the whole field. Considering how much business
| users are stretching Excel to fill the gap, I do think there
| would be demand for better options. I guess Airtable etc are the
| modern alternatives.
|
| I find it just a shame that databases as a concept is something
| that has been relegated to be hidden deep in the backends and
| accessed only by specialized DB admins or through narrow and
| leaky APIs; SQL is considered arcane wizardry instead of being
| suitable for technical business users like afaik it was
| originally envisioned as.
| humanfromearth9 wrote:
| I haven't seen anything that beats the UI and UX of FileMaker
| Pro from the 90s.
| nxobject wrote:
| Truthfully, given the backwards compatibility of Windows and
| Wine, you could still get away in this day and age with
| sticking with it as a solution.
| octopoc wrote:
| Has FileMaker Pro changed / improved / worsened significantly
| since then? The latest release is FileMaker Pro 2023.
| detourdog wrote:
| It has created a how complex layer under the simplicity to
| better compete with databases. It's a great environment but
| they seem to cater to experts more than people need to
| Crete a database for their own use.
|
| It is great deployment platform for offices based on
| FileMaker/database workflows.
| buescher wrote:
| Agreed if FileMaker would do what you needed. 1990s FileMaker
| was not really relational, right? To be painfully fair to
| Microsoft, Access was more powerful and did a nice job of
| balancing capability and UX.
|
| For many contemporary use cases where one might have used
| FileMaker in the nineties, there's SharePoint lists and
| PowerBI.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _FileMaker was not really relational, right?_
|
| Not until v3 (1995) or v7 (2004), depending on how low your
| bar is.
| lysecret wrote:
| Notion is putting the database in the Center in a way.
| zem wrote:
| to give some perspective, there is an app i've written as a
| complicated google sheets script, which would have been way
| simpler to maintain as a desktop app, but what the end-users
| want is the ability to have multiple people use it from
| multiple devices at once. that's become table stakes for a lot
| of software now, and it's really what has killed desktop apps
| for stuff like this.
| egeozcan wrote:
| > BeeBase is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Amiga
|
| What a nice surprise!
|
| How do you test? Could you automate it?
| nxobject wrote:
| Beyond your computer/workstation, I'd love if there was a
| personal database program that could also access via your phone,
| so you can use it on the go (even via dynamic DNS if needed) -
| modern no-code platforms do that, but data sovereignty would be
| nice.
| xet7 wrote:
| Try:
|
| https://www.nubuilder.com
|
| https://github.com/nuBuilder/nuBuilder-4.5
| Willamin wrote:
| Lately I've started using a barebones SQLite DB for this and a
| GUI DB editor program (TablePlus, which happens to have an iOS
| app as well).
|
| I'd always relied on ORMs in whatever web application I used to
| interact with DBs for the most part, but I've recently been
| learning more about views, triggers, and more complex
| relations. It's been insightful and I've found that much of
| what I want from a program like BeeBase is covered by knowing
| more SQL.
|
| ----
|
| That being said, I'd love to see what you described too. I
| don't mean for this to be like the infamous "why do you need
| dropbox when you have rsync" comment. I just wanted to give an
| anecdotal alternative to use until someone creates what you
| described!
| rambambram wrote:
| Try good ol' PHPMyAdmin from your local webhosting company!?
| The view on a mobile screen in portrait mode is not even that
| bad.
| sesm wrote:
| From a cursory glance, the Lisp dialect that BeeBase is using is
| closest to Common Lisp, is that correct? Sorry, I'm not an expert
| on CL, but it would be great to see a quick comparison of BeeBase
| Lisp with other popular Lisp dialects, like this:
| https://clojure.org/reference/lisps
| hgyjnbdet wrote:
| I have to use Access at work. Im wondering if this could be a
| replacement. Certainly LO Base is not, much as I'd want it to be.
|
| I suppose it depends on whether the scripting language can do
| what vba can, especially with regards to xslx files.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Javascript and python supposedly are coming to excel.
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