SQL Database Management Tool on Electron and NPM
Postico is cool. But some features are behind a paywall and don’t seem right to me. And as web developer, I would like a tool that ultimately can be installed via npm or build with electron.
Features of a good SQL Database Client
First: A feature that I like to develop, is an sql tool, that allow to define variables and fragments to be reused inside the queries, that can avoid continuous copying of queries and id values.
Second: Offer directly from the search to insert data. when there is a
select * from ...query.Third: It should support databases I use, that means mysql and postgres.
Fourth: allow to explore and edit the database schema.
Fifth: be quick and pretty.
Sixth: store some connection information.
Seventh: allow encrypts connections.
Eight: as the tool already get implemented in JS, why not let’s execute some js code right in the tool. That can help hugely when debugging.
Awesome Features of Postico
Even dough I can dream of a more effective tool, I wanna tell you that postico is a fantastic tool already. Even in its free version. It has a very clean Ui, manages many connections.
Postico’s sql editor is very good. it feels fast, has syntax highlighting and can save the Text to a file. you can type many queries at once, when click the execute button or press control + enter, the query under the cursor is executed. For more precision, you can select a part of a query and it will execute only this.
Some features such as filtering the complete table views are limited to the payed version, but that actually made me get better at SQL, because I wrote more queries.
Alternatives for a good database management tools
The first database management tool I got in contact with was PHP my admin. It is a web UI and give access to a lot of the features in a mySQL database. Later I was using the mysql Workbench. It feels absolutely overkill. even dough it sometimes crashed, it was so good. Drawing database schemas very quickly and designing new tables, it had much more features then I ever needed.
Not sure why for postgres I am searching for a good tool. PostgresAdmin is feels buggy and is very unstable and is ugly. I believe there is definetly room for improvement.
Who want to do it?
Not sure when I get to it. The idea is here. I think when having the fragment feature working, then it is already useful for many. Such a tool can improve over time with more and more features.
But first, maybe you are interested to learn how to build reactive apps with postgres?