[HN Gopher] DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Vers...
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       DB Browser for SQLite (Windows, macOS, and Most Versions of Linux)
        
       Author : punnerud
       Score  : 346 points
       Date   : 2024-07-08 20:08 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (sqlitebrowser.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (sqlitebrowser.org)
        
       | runjake wrote:
       | Great software. I use it almost every day. But, posted many times
       | before:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sqlitebrowser.org
        
         | richardw wrote:
         | I've been here since 2008, and only saw/needed this today.
         | 
         | I'm one of today's 10000 :) https://xkcd.com/1053/
        
       | zoomablemind wrote:
       | There used to be a Firefox plugin with much similar features.
       | However since the change of Firefox plugin arch, it's no longer
       | available.
        
         | 0x5FC3 wrote:
         | I remember using this back in the day, cool stuff!
        
         | Joe_Cool wrote:
         | There is one for the weird lz4json format they use now:
         | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozlz4-edit/
         | 
         | But it is super unwieldy. Pretty much the only way to decode
         | those files without compiling the decoder from source since it
         | has non-standard lz4 headers.
         | 
         | For the few remaining SQLite files DB Browser works great.
        
       | noman-land wrote:
       | I seriously love this app. I use it nearly every day. I scoured
       | the net looking for a FOSS sqlite Mac app with a table exploring
       | GUI. This is the best one!
        
       | iKlsR wrote:
       | Great project, came in super handy on a project and I needed a
       | way to mass import csv files which wasn't a feature at the time
       | (7 years ago), threw together a PR over a weekend and the kind
       | maintainers helped get it in. The chief maintainer at the time
       | Justin is a cool guy, donate if you can.
        
         | justinclift wrote:
         | Thanks heaps. Yep the donations definitely help pay for useful
         | stuff for us maintainers (and domain name, etc).
        
       | zie wrote:
       | If you are looking for another one: I use https://sqlitestudio.pl
       | which is GPL-3 only and also cross platform. I'm not sure I ever
       | compared them, I think I just came across sqlitestudio first and
       | it stuck.
        
         | thinker5555 wrote:
         | I've used both DB Browser and SQLiteStudio, and I prefer the
         | flow and interface of SQLiteStudio.
         | 
         | It's been a few years since I've used DB Browser, so I forget
         | exactly what I didn't like about it. Maybe I should download it
         | again and try it out one more time and see if I still feel the
         | same way.
        
         | keyle wrote:
         | this is weird
         | 
         | > Portable - No need to install or uninstall. Just download,
         | decompress and run.
         | 
         | and I download the dmg and it's an unverified installer inside.
         | Pass.
        
           | zie wrote:
           | Most OSS software is not signed, as Apple, MS, etc require
           | you to pay to sign. I know there are some non-profits that
           | will sign OSS stuff for Windows, but I don't know of any that
           | do that for Apple devices.
           | 
           | I run on MacOS, I have no idea how I installed it, but I
           | haven't had any trouble.
        
       | winstonp wrote:
       | Would love one that looks as slick as Supabase's web ui
        
       | ocdtrekkie wrote:
       | This is my go-to while I've been working on a SQLite-based app to
       | see what's actually in the database.
        
       | me551ah wrote:
       | Been using this software for a decade and it's hands down the
       | best SQLite browser and DB editor that I have seen.
        
       | heavyset_go wrote:
       | Another similar open source app is DBeaver: https://dbeaver.io/
       | 
       | Works with more than just SQLite.
        
         | artificialLimbs wrote:
         | Nice because it has eclipse market capability with which you
         | can install vrapper and other handy plugins.
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | including duckdb as well.
        
         | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
         | I'd need to use DBeaver Pro for the work I do - but they don't
         | offer perpetual licensing - which is a deal-killer for me
         | (EDIT: I originally incorrectly claimed they didn't support
         | offline-installs, but apparently they do - but only for
         | installs with a 12-month built-in timebomb:
         | https://dbeaver.com/license-types/ )
         | 
         | It says "No monthly subscription" which really just means
         | "Annual subscription" instead: https://dbeaver.com/edition/
         | 
         | It's not that I don't think it's worth $500/yr - I'd actually
         | be happy to pay $1000 or more - but I absolutely need a
         | pain+hassle-free UX that I can drag around air-gapped networks
         | - and install on a legacy Windows 2003 VM running an ancient
         | build of Sybase and then forget about it for 3-5 years, but be
         | able to RDP-in and know that my DB tooling is still going to be
         | there, unchanged, reliable and dependable.
         | 
         | ...whereas subscription desktop software with deeply integrated
         | online accounts and activation and mandatory updates every few
         | weeks (and the occasional account system outage, which ruins
         | everything (looking at you, GitKraken) really _really_ does not
         | work well in those kinds (...my kinds) of environment.
         | 
         | -----
         | 
         | SaaS as a business-model for online services is fine; great,
         | even; and I'm not even opposed to it for desktop software
         | provided that it delivers more value and overall UX quality
         | compared to how-we-did-things-before - but SaaS companies don't
         | have a solution to the problem of ultra-long-life'd, ultra-
         | dependable, server/system administration tooling.
         | 
         | Can you imagine if Bash or Zsh - or phpMyAdmin - or systemd had
         | to phone-home for a new OAuth access-token every month?
        
           | TheDong wrote:
           | What feature do you need that isn't in the open source
           | version?
           | 
           | Why not fork it and implement that feature, and then use
           | that?
           | 
           | If you don't want to deal with a company trying to extract
           | profit from you, use the open source version. That's the way
           | to ensure your own freedom.
        
             | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
             | > What feature do you need that isn't in the open source
             | version?
             | 
             | ODBC support, Cassandra, Redis, and Azure (Table) Storage
             | support, and support for the kinds of obsolete RDBMS and
             | "4GL" you see in large enterprise and small mom-and-pop
             | backrooms (Progress, Clipper, AdvantageDB, ElevateDB, etc).
             | And SQL script debugging for Postgres.
             | 
             | Currently I have separate tools/clients/IDEs for all the
             | different data systems I target (e.g. SSMS, MySQL
             | Workbench, Azure Storage Explorer, Azure Data Studio, Excel
             | PowerQuery, LinqPad for .NET Framework 4.x for both x86 and
             | x64 because ODBC and OLE-DB are like that); while I have a
             | modest set of portable-ish VM images of obsolete Windows OS
             | instances where I can run MS Access 2003 or some Clipper
             | derivative. I'm also still running Firebird and even FoxPro
             | 9 in another VM somewhere.
             | 
             | ...so yes, having a single tool which handles 85% of my
             | tasks without needing to juggle VMs and multiple bloated
             | Electron apps together would be an improvement for me and
             | worth me paying money for.
             | 
             | > Why not fork it and implement that feature, and then use
             | that?
             | 
             | "Fork it" is not a reasonable suggestion considering the
             | amount of work involved (see above).
             | 
             | > If you don't want to deal with a company trying to
             | extract profit from you, use the open source version.
             | That's the way to ensure your own freedom
             | 
             | As I said, I'm perfectly fine with me throwing money at
             | DBeaver. I'm just expressing my frustration with DBeaver
             | that I think they're being callous by not offering
             | perpetual offline licenses for Dbeaver Pro, for any amount
             | of money. The fact they used to[1] but don't anymore
             | suggests they were getting disappointing return business
             | from deep-pocketed "enterprise" customers, but I'm
             | disappointed that their solution to this problem of theirs
             | means leaving my money on the table because now they don't
             | have any product licenses that I can work with.
             | 
             | [1] According to
             | https://dbeaver.com/docs/dbeaver/Differences-between-
             | license... - they stopped doing perpetual licenses after
             | v23.3).
        
         | chasil wrote:
         | Toad by Quest Software was the original SQL GUI development
         | tool, and developed the basic style that most of these apps use
         | today. I have senior developers who refuse to consider anything
         | else, and cling to unsupported versions of Toad.
         | 
         | Oracle SQL Developer does not support SQLite, but the design is
         | their "internal Toad-killer," and reimplements Toad in Java. It
         | does accept JDBC drivers for 3rd-party databases (but not
         | SQLite so far).
        
       | czaxvgdcs wrote:
       | Oddly the release version doesn't support strict tables. Nightly
       | does.
       | 
       | I moved to beaver and it's mostly been fine.
        
       | tester457 wrote:
       | For the CLI there's litecli. It has auto-completion and syntax
       | highlighting.
       | 
       | https://github.com/dbcli/litecli
        
         | lf-non wrote:
         | Nice. I use pgcli for postgres and wanted something similar for
         | sqlite.
        
           | hprotagonist wrote:
           | same core devs.
        
       | bigyikes wrote:
       | I have this app open right now, actually. It's honestly... okay.
       | I wish I had something better installed. It gets the job done,
       | but the UI leaves something to be desired. It's free though, so I
       | can't complain. I use it to manage my local financial transaction
       | database.
        
         | jszymborski wrote:
         | DataGrip is less free and has a pretty good UI.
         | 
         | I primarily use DBeaver, it is meh...
        
       | webprofusion wrote:
       | Use this a lot, doesn't seem to get many releases but it looks
       | like there's one coming soon.
        
       | lucydodo wrote:
       | Hello Hacker News! I'm one of the maintainers of this project.
       | 
       | Thank you for featuring our project here, and we will be
       | releasing a new stable version soon, so stay tuned for the new
       | version! If you have any further comments, suggestions, or
       | questions about the project, please feel free to leave an issue
       | in our repository! Thank you.
        
         | gvkhna wrote:
         | Thank you for your contribution. This is a great piece of FOSS!
        
         | Fudgel wrote:
         | Will support for STRICT be in this release?
        
           | justinclift wrote:
           | Yep, it's been in the development code base since 2021, and
           | is in our Release Candidate builds for the next upcoming
           | release:
           | 
           | https://github.com/sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser/releases/tag/.
           | ..
        
         | cushychicken wrote:
         | Just discovered this piece of software on my own about two
         | months ago.
         | 
         | Thank you for making - and giving away - such a valuable tool.
         | I am a huge fan and very grateful to you and your team.
        
         | abnry wrote:
         | I appreciate this software, thanks!
        
       | lbj wrote:
       | Looks very nice - I'm still hard-stuck in EJC, the convenience is
       | just unbeatable.
        
       | moonshinefe wrote:
       | The killer feature for me with this app is the stupidly easy CSV
       | loading. I deal with huge CSVs at work often. SQLite Browser is
       | the easiest, fastest and most lightweight UI tool to analyze them
       | I've tried. It can load millions of records into a table in like
       | <3 seconds. Then obviously you can query the CSV data via SQL.
        
         | erremerre wrote:
         | I tried the non-installer exe version (32 &64bits) because that
         | csv loading sounded very interesting, but cant make it work
         | without installation because sqlite3.dll, qt5network.dll,
         | qt5xml.dll nor qt5printsupport.dll can't be found.
         | 
         | I don't see the point of providing a standalone exe version
         | that does not work?
         | 
         | Well, back to excel for csv :/
        
           | justinclift wrote:
           | > I don't see the point of providing a standalone exe version
           | that does not work?
           | 
           | Which download did you use?
           | 
           | For windows there's really only an .msi which installs
           | everything, and a .zip which needs to be unzipped and have
           | the executable file run from inside the uncompressed
           | directory.
           | 
           | The files it's complaining about missing should next to the
           | .exe inside the unpacked directory. If you move the .exe
           | elsewhere, or just extract it by itself, it's not going to
           | work.
        
           | Stagnant wrote:
           | All of those DLLs are included in the same zip file as the
           | portable exe. Sounds like you may be trying to run it without
           | extracting first.
        
         | Gormo wrote:
         | You might want to give VisiData a look: https://visidata.org
         | 
         | It's a TUI program, so if you want a full-featured GUI, it
         | might not be up your alley, but it's the best tool I've ever
         | used for doing ad-hoc work with large CSVs.
        
         | justinclift wrote:
         | One of the senior devs (Martin) spent a _loooot_ of time
         | optimising the CSV import process. Many different approaches
         | using sample data sets (from rough memory) of between 800MB and
         | a few GB I think.
        
         | tracker1 wrote:
         | I think this feature should be included in more structured
         | database tools. Being able to load a CSV and query against it,
         | either to an in-memory sqlite or a temp directory (depending on
         | size) is a great option for this kind of work.
        
         | wvh wrote:
         | I've noticed throughout the years SQLite has lots of handy
         | features built in for dealing with CSV and other input and
         | output formats. Sometimes it's easier to get data into it and
         | use SQL to slice and dice that data than it is to pipe a bunch
         | of unix shell commands together that really only understand
         | unstructured text. Discoverability and subsequently trying to
         | remember all shell incantations is a bit of an issue though, so
         | many people don't see SQLite as the Swiss army knife it can be.
        
         | mrtimo wrote:
         | Thanks for letting me know about this! I do the same thing...
         | DuckDB loads CSVs very quick and easy. Malloy uses duckDB and
         | can work in VScode or vscode.dev or the vscode built into
         | github. So, you can analyze large .csv files in any of those
         | places.
         | 
         | For example, go here [1]. Press "." (this loads vscode in
         | browser) and you will be analyzing large .csv or .parquet files
         | directly in your browser, after you click on the .malloynb file
         | 
         | Something I made to analyze every form submitted to the
         | Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) (10-K etc.) since
         | 2014. [2] Go there, press ".", install the malloy extension,
         | and click on the .malloynb file! Do it all within your browser,
         | or download it and use it in VScode.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.dev/malloydata/quickstart/blob/main/README
         | [2] https://github.dev/mrtimo/isa5
        
       | xwat wrote:
       | The best
        
       | digitalsankhara wrote:
       | Would really like to have a dedicated DuckDB version of this
       | please. Also, add in a few simple tools for analytics - basic
       | chart, pivot table tool, ETL etc. Nothing fancy, just enough to
       | scope out the data before building pipelines/reports etc.
       | 
       | No rush - tomorrow is fine :-)
       | 
       | Thanks.
        
       | pjmlp wrote:
       | Looks great, specially for not being yet another Chrome shell.
       | 
       | Good job!
        
         | justinclift wrote:
         | It's an actual native app (Qt5). ;)
        
       | Shalomboy wrote:
       | This application single-handedly underpins the entire
       | competitive/online yugioh space. Thank you for your excellent
       | work!
        
         | justinclift wrote:
         | Interesting. Are there (SQLite?) extensions or other bits
         | commonly used with the application for Yugioh?
         | 
         | Asking because we're getting very near the next major release,
         | but if there are extensions or similar (OSS) things people
         | commonly use with our application, then we could look at adding
         | them to in the next release. Or maybe the point release after
         | that (depending on time/effort/etc).
         | 
         | Note that I'm not at all familiar with Yugioh personally, but
         | looking at the wikipedia page... wow that's an _extensive_
         | extended Community. ;)
        
       | asmr wrote:
       | I guess devs haven't ventured down the rabbithole of public DBs?
       | Not trying to be a jerk, just honestly surprised this is on the
       | front page.
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | Surprised and not surprised. There's a lot of devs that know a
         | little SQL, but I think it's different when you're mostly using
         | ORMs to abstract away the DB. For business users, you pull up a
         | GUI like this or the one that comes with the DB and sometimes
         | spend hours writing queries and exploring the schema, so you
         | get used to these kinds of tools... especially if you have to
         | move between several databases. I'm sure plenty of devs, do as
         | well, but probably a smaller proportion. It's a great project
         | though.
        
         | punnerud wrote:
         | I posted it (and did a couple of years ago).
         | 
         | I use Datagrip as my primary tool when connecting to DB, but DB
         | Browser is still used several times each month because the
         | simple CSV import, adding index and view data.
         | 
         | I even copy-paste DB Browser in Application folder on Mac, to
         | be able to run 2-3 instances at the same time.
        
       | aabbcc1241 wrote:
       | I'm teaching people dev with sqlite, and DB Browser is a few
       | tools I recommend them to download (alone with VSCode and Meld)
        
       | GGerome wrote:
       | I am a huge fan of this app that is the Toad like equivalent for
       | Sqlite for me. Keep up this excellent work!
        
       | julius-fx wrote:
       | My favorite for years - love it.
        
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       (page generated 2024-07-09 23:01 UTC)