[HN Gopher] Show HN: Visual DB - Web front end for your database
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Show HN: Visual DB - Web front end for your database
If you have a cloud-hosted database, read on: Visual DB was
designed for you. Visual DB is the fastest way to create data
entry forms for your database: Starting with an Excel spreadsheet,
you can import your data into the database and create a great-
looking form in under 10 minutes. Watch this video:
https://youtu.be/6rVD5rmrjN8 Visual DB is a comprehensive SaaS
frontend for your database. In addition to data entry forms, Visual
DB also has a spreadsheet-like interface for inserting and updating
data in your database. You can also build interactive reports using
Visual DB. Finally, although not intended as a replacement for your
database's admin tool, Visual DB can browse schema, create tables,
set up relationships, and import and export data. Visual DB began
as a drag-and-drop form builder for databases. Forms created with
Visual DB are practically indistinguishable from those hand-coded
using React. You can add client-side validation, set available
values (displayed in dropdowns), define default values, and even
add logic to dynamically hide or disable fields--all without
writing a single line of code! With Visual DB Forms, you'll never
have to write another CRUD app again. If you have been using Excel
to manage data and running into its limits because the volume of
data has grown, Visual DB Sheets may be of interest to you. With
its spreadsheet-like interface, Visual DB Sheets allows users to
interact with data as they would in Excel, while securely storing
that data in a robust relational database. Spreadsheet-database
hybrids have been around for a while now, but we believe we have
one of the best implementations, with features such as advanced
grouping, support for foreign keys and lookup tables, query
parameters, full-text as-you-type filtering, and so on. The newest
feature of Visual DB is interactive reporting. Traditional
reporting tools offer limited interactivity. For example, while
most reporting tools support time series charts, they do not allow
users to zoom or pan along the time axis. In contrast, Visual DB
supports this capability thanks to its innovative approach: it
downloads the dataset to the client and processes and visualizes
data directly in the browser. This allows it to handle user
interactions without a server round trip. Visual DB has excellent
support for query parameters, which allows you to bring only the
subset of data that's of interest (up to 100K rows), to the client.
Visual DB supports PostgreSQL (including Neon), MySQL, SQL Server
and Oracle. Give it a whirl, and we look forward to getting your
feedback: https://visualdb.com
Author : visualdb
Score : 97 points
Date : 2024-09-10 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (visualdb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (visualdb.com)
| thih9 wrote:
| Congrats on the launch!
|
| Product feedback: looks super useful.
|
| Landing page feedback: clear and to the point. I love seeing lots
| of product screenshots. I'd like to see a section about privacy,
| especially when the product involves db access and AI. Please
| consider replacing the carousel. https://shouldiuseacarousel.com/
| visualdb wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. We have a section on data security
| here: https://visualdb.com/datasecurity/ We are also planning
| to release a self-hosted version soon, which can be used with
| intranet databases - this should take care of security
| concerns.
| Multrex wrote:
| Yes please. A self hosted version would be great for
| companies that have strict security rules about data.
| Onavo wrote:
| This is not their first time. They were previously called
| https://airforms.com and were posted here multiple times. No
| sure what HN's rules are on rebrands for Show HNs.
| visualdb wrote:
| Not a rebrand but a pivot. It is a major overhaul with
| significant new features such as reporting.
| threatofrain wrote:
| That site argues that carousels should basically never be used,
| but personally I hate the design constraints and resulting UX
| of refresh on hitting bottom of screen (the alternative to
| carousels).
|
| Something to look at how airbnb uses carousels when showing a
| listings. There are many listings and you're not necessarily
| interested enough to click yet, and there's a cognitive cost to
| leaving and re-entering the search experience, so you can
| either have a modal or allow a carousel. The carousel is the
| halfway point between interested enough to investigate further
| but not interested enough to step into a new visual scene and
| step back out into the search experience.
| biomcgary wrote:
| After comparing a few different products in the no-code, low-code
| space for CRUD, I recently adopted Retool for my company to
| develop internal applications. Our apps depends on postgres under
| the hood, so we can still run traditional queries without the UI
| when needed.
|
| What would I gain by switching to Visual DB?
| visualdb wrote:
| Retool is a great product especially if you are a developer.
| Visual DB is intended for people who can't or won't code.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Good clarification. Retool runs into a wall pretty quickly if
| you are unwilling/unable to write ANY sql or js.
| refset wrote:
| How would you describe the differences with
| https://nocodb.com/ ?
| visualdb wrote:
| We have a section here on comparison to Airtable:
| https://visualdb.com/spreadsheet/#airtable These points
| should apply to other tools similar to Airtable.
| refset wrote:
| Thanks, I've not used Airtable enough to appreciate the
| comparison entirely but the focus on form building makes
| a lot of sense. Google Forms sets a low bar and the next
| best choice isn't obvious to me. Congrats on the launch!
| TripleChecker wrote:
| Cool product - I like the idea of having my forms data stored and
| accessible directly via the PostgreSQL database vs having it
| locked in Google Forms or Typeform. BTW, noticed a few typos on
| the site (see here:
| https://triplechecker.com/s/G5LRKF/visualdb.com?v=OelKy)
| visualdb wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. Triplechecker seems like a cool tool,
| BTW!
| BizyDev wrote:
| If your tool was available on-premise I would be really
| interested. Since a tool like this is primarily intended, I
| think, for internal use cases, making it available on-premise
| should be a priority from my point of view.
|
| Beside this, the tool looks great, congrats for the job, well
| done!
| visualdb wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. We'll make self-hosted version a high
| priority.
| alek_me wrote:
| Yes an on premise solution is quite important for place in
| hired in. To add to this I've been doing a lot of looking
| into products like this and explored nocodb as a use case.
| Here are some limitations I've run into.
|
| 1) Granular user roles/permissions. Nocodb has this but it's
| a little awkward with different bases. For example it's hard
| to see which tables that user is limited to as you create new
| bases.
|
| 2) Forms. The form needs to have flexibility in required
| fields which nocodb (and not just based on schema) does but
| it's missing a key feature. That would be "created by" field
| which doesn't work on external database with different bases
| for different permissions. As in if you have a different base
| per user group (to have different permission on table access)
| adding a new record does not populate created by correctly.
|
| 3) relational data. The goal of these products is for non-
| technical people to use these and none have the option of
| clicking into the relation to bring up that record on its
| table. As in all you see is the description/id of the
| relational record.
|
| 4) at some point you want to possibly use the database for
| user management. Because you may want to write an internal
| tooling that scans a qr code or something or the form is
| client based. But then you have users that may live on a
| different database interacting with your main database. And
| then you would need to match the users with what they view
| and what they can create.
|
| Essentially what I found is that with nocodb is that it is
| good for viewing data but to add data I need to create forms.
| But then nocodb lacks in "dashboard" statistics and graphs
|
| Sorry if this is not clearly explained. I'm on holiday and
| tired rn.
| visualdb wrote:
| Regarding permissions, I think we meet your requirements.
| End users do not have permission to tables directly, they
| can only enter data through forms and sheets.
|
| Regarding "created by", do you mean a field that is
| automatically set, based on who created the record? That's
| on our todo list.
|
| Regarding relational data, we meet your requirements. Any
| time there is a foreign key, we display a "..." button
| which shows up with records from the foreign table you can
| select the row you want. This is fairly sophisticated...
| you can display all records from the foreign table
| (default), our you can have a query, and you can even have
| cascading dropdowns (for example you select Region in the
| first dropdown, then it shows Cities in that region in the
| next dropdown and so on), then matching rows are shown.
|
| Regarding user management we store users and permissions
| separately from databases, and the permissions you applies
| to all databases in the application. Permissions are set at
| the application level and you can create a different
| application (with connections to same databases if needed)
| if you want different permissions.
| sixtyj wrote:
| It looks nice, indeed. Upvote for on-premise version.
| rnavi wrote:
| Congrats to visualdb on launch.
|
| If you are looking for free open source version try
|
| https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb
|
| It's fairly simple to setup. Please refer to our readme/docs
|
| Disclaimer: founder here.
| ktm5j wrote:
| Looks awesome! Well done, this might come in handy for folks
| where I was just hired. Definitely going to keep this in
| mind.
| visualdb wrote:
| Nocodb is indeed a worthy competitor! If you're interested
| in how Visual DB is differentiated from Airtable-like
| products see here:
| https://visualdb.com/spreadsheet/#airtable
| leansensei wrote:
| I second this, NocoDB is great!
| tracker1 wrote:
| Reminds me of MS Access and InfoPath. Nice to see a more open
| option. SQLite support in addition to Excel spreadsheets would be
| nice too. A portable/desktop and self-host option would be
| imperative imo, as many would be hesitant to open their databases
| to a web tool like this.
| visualdb wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. Self-hosted version is now a high
| priority for us since many people have given us this feedback.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Would give it a shot for stuff I'm working on but the free plan
| is too limited with only 1000 records and the paid plan is
| deceptively priced. It's not $5 per user, it's $25 if you only
| need one user.
| epalm wrote:
| Looks nice, both the site and the app! The first thought I had
| though was, here's a central place where potentially hundreds,
| thousands, perhaps tens of thousands (or more, depending on how
| successful you are) of database credentials are stored. Your
| https://visualdb.com/datasecurity/ page says "Database
| credentials are encrypted before being stored" but how do I know
| that? Encrypted how? This equates to "I pinky promise I won't get
| hacked, and even if I do, all your passwords would be impossible
| to crack anyways". Security-conscious users probably will need a
| bit more than that. Any thoughts on using other authentication
| methods?
|
| Edit: as other commenters have mentioned, an on-prem version
| would certainly ease concerns a bit.
| visualdb wrote:
| Thanks for raising those points. To maximize security we are
| prioritizing on-prem version.
| anakaine wrote:
| [deleted]
| breadwinner wrote:
| You can't store database passwords as hashes, because you
| need the clear password each time to connect to the
| database. Really, the only way to guarantee security is to
| use air-gapped systems, in which case you only have to
| worry about guarding physical access. See
| https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-
| intelligence/2024/05/micr...
| acomjean wrote:
| Reminds me of a mash up of Datatables editor
| (https://editor.datatables.net/) and phpMyAdmin.
|
| With the nice addition of forms.
|
| But I can see an all in one database/mini application tool making
| custom business applications where Lotus Notes and FileMaker used
| to be.
| reneberlin wrote:
| There is also already:
|
| https://baserow.io/
|
| https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb
|
| https://github.com/rowyio/rowy
|
| https://undb.io/
|
| https://teable.io/
| breadwinner wrote:
| Most of those products are very simple...
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