6 ms·

Ultorg: A User Interface for Relational Data

129 points by veltas 3y ago

_boffin_ 3y ago
I love this, but am not going to pay a subscription for this. $420 a year? That’s more than IntelliJ Ultimate! Doesn’t even come with a fallback license that I can use when I stop subscribing.
- alad_ 3y ago
  +1 It would be nice to have a free tier, even if it limited the amount of time that I could use it per day. 1h/day seems enough for a hobbyist to incorporate this tool into their workflow.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    I'm very curious what a hobbyist could use this for! I've noticed that SQLite itself seems to already have all the functionality needed for an AirTable clone besides the UI, everything needed to generate a pretty decent end user forms interface is basically already in a database schema. sqlite-web is really close, just missing foreign key browsing.
    - _boffin_ 3y ago
      Data is my hobby and i love how it lays data and its relations.
  - eirikbakke 3y ago
    Founder here. I launched Ultorg a few days ago, so I still haven't quite figured out if there ought to be a free or reduced-functionality tier yet. There was a big "The fallacy of freemium in SaaS" post from another founder a few weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37832809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37832809), which inspired me to try with "free trial then paid-tier-only" for the initial launch. But I might change it later. For now, I've set a rather long free trial period (21 days).
    - _boffin_ 3y ago
      What are your thoughts about single time purchase and or the JetBrains model?
      - eirikbakke 3y ago
        Looking at IntelliJ Ultimate, they do $599 for the first year, $479 for the second, $359 for the third and onwards. But then they have a "perpetual fallback license"... so I assume many people will buy just the first year and then keep that version forever. For people who prefer perpetual licenses, is this because of a perceived lower total cost? Or for some other reason? Does the sentiment change depending on whether the buyer is purchasing for themselves or for their employer? One downside of perpetual licenses is that at any given time, a large number of different versions will be in use across different users. Though maybe the users don't mind--perhaps they only want to upgrade their software whenever they change laptops.
        _boffin_ 3y ago
        Let me ask you a question before answering. Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years or do you believe this is feature complete? > who prefer perpetual licenses, is this because of a perceived lower total cost? Or for some other reason? For me, it's knowing that I'll have access to the software forever, but if I want to continue to get valuable enhancements, I keep paying. This is for me, the individual. When it's for a company, I truthfully care about that a lot less, next to nill, but care more about support, invoicing, SLAs, etc... I have IntelliJ Ultimate at home and pay for it every year, but it gives me piece of mind knowing that if something happens, it's still "mine", but just doesn't get any new bells and whistles. Every place I go to, guess what I develop with? IntelliJ. If they don't have it for me already, they will within the week.
        victor106 3y ago
        > Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years or do you believe this is feature complete? This is an excellent question. Not just for this particular case but for anyone planning on releasing subscription SaaS or app
anon84873628 3y ago
Anyone have comparison with Sigma or other spreadsheet oriented BI / analytics tools?
- eirikbakke 3y ago
  Ultorg founder here. Traditional BI tools work like an Excel pivot table: Put some fields on the X axis, some fields on the Y axis, and get an aggregation or visualization in the middle. The input is always a single table (or, if you have multiple tables, a flat join across all of them). Ultorg is better at working with databases that have multiple tables in them, across arbitrary one-to-many relationships (not just warehouse-style star schemas), and where you want to look at actual raw data rather than colorful aggregations. There are specialized automatic table styles that visualize e.g. how one table relates to others through nested or parallel joins. The data displays you see in Ultorg are also editable--you can commit changes back to the database if desired.
  - Scarbutt 3y ago
    Is it possible to generate new tables within Ultorg? Specifically, for the purpose of experimenting with a novel schema using test data.
    - eirikbakke 3y ago
      You can edit data in existing tables, but there is not yet a "Create Table" action. In fact, Ultorg does not currently host any data at all; it is all assumed to be existing in an external data source. So for now I'd recommend doing the actual CREATE TABLE statements manually in e.g. an external PostgreSQL database, but then using Ultorg to edit the data. Schema editing actions (Create Table, Insert Column etc.) are on the TODO list, though.
kgodey 3y ago
Congrats on launching, Eirik!
- eirikbakke 3y ago
  A friend on Hackernews! Thanks!! Kriti also has a wonderful project in this space, which is non-commercial and organized as a 501(c)(3): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999774
  - kgodey 3y ago
    You're welcome! I'm very glad to see Ultorg both generally available and on the HN front page, you've built such a cool interface.
canistel 3y ago
Refreshing to see a desktop application with native widgets (unless I am wrong). Wonder what GUI toolkit is used?
- bradrn 3y ago
  From the images I’m guessing Qt, so not truly native.
  - eirikbakke 3y ago
    It's Swing--same as IntelliJ.
edlinfan 3y ago
Eirik, in case you're still watching this thread: I would pay you $400 for this tool without hesitation. I would also pay for upgrades. However, the $400/yr subscription model is a deal killer. This is fine if you're targeting business users only, but it puts the tool out of reach for all but the most determined individuals. You might want to consider the pricing model used for many digital audio workstations -- a perpetual license for a few hundred dollars, with free patches until the next major version. Then the next major version also costs a few hundred dollars. Rinse and repeat. This gives you a solid income stream, without ripping your software out of the hands of a customer the instant they're short on cash. It also means the program could work without an internet connection or other constant DRM/activation nonsense. This will likely matter for the technical audience you're targeting. Best of luck!
- replwoacause 3y ago
  I feel this way too. I was excited, as a beta user, to see this go GA but then I saw the pricing and was forced to move on. Pretty steep indeed. But he has a great piece of software here. Best of luck Eirik!
- eirikbakke 3y ago
  Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I always thought of relational databases as a tool for businesses; normally we don't need them as individuals--except perhaps when planning a wedding! Thus the pricing is targeted for businesses and people who get reimbursed by their employers. A second group might be contractors who purchase their own tools. There might be ways to make a separate tier for private or occasional use, though. And recurring vs. perpetual might be a separate question from the actual total expected cost.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    It's a very different conversation when an engineer goes to their manager and says "I think this tool I tried out at home could improve our work" versus "we should buy everyone licenses for this tool that I've never used".
  - 3y ago
devmor 3y ago
Echoing the sentiment of other users here - I would happily pay a steep up front price for this software. I will not pay a monthly subscription for software that runs on my machines using data on my machines. Please reconsider the rent-seeking price model, or at least move it somewhere appropriate like an enterprise support tier.
- d1sxeyes 3y ago
  I don't think this is particularly rent-seeking, just you and the creator have a difference of opinion on the value of the software.
  - devmor 3y ago
    Again, the value is not the issue. Perpetual payment is. My post was very clear.
    - d1sxeyes 3y ago
      I wasn’t confused by your post, I disagreed with it. OP expects that their software will continue to deliver value over time, and so has chosen a payment model that reflects that. This is not “rent-seeking”.
      - devmor 3y ago
        If that's true, OP's pricing model could reflect that by charging for updates or having a fallback license for current version. As long as it does not, it is in fact, rent-seeking by definition.
        d1sxeyes 3y ago
        I’m not sure which definition of rent-seeking you’re using here, but I encourage you to revisit it. Rent-seeking doesn’t just mean “charging an expensive subscription fee”.
wg0 3y ago
Great tool. Nice. Something you want to have. But. I'm not a product, market or pricing expert but even I can tell that this is a very very steep (and recurring per user) price especially in 2023 where businesses and individuals alike are tracking and scrutinizing every single dime spent or to be spent. No kidding but big companies won't mind putting more engineering hours to build their internal data dashboards which would be almost a one time Investment and minor tweaks here and there afterwards whereas most already would have. Individuals and hobbyists can't do that but most can't afford this either. Which leaves to pretty much financial industry (PEs, Wall Street folks and such) that have to juggle Excel sheet Attachments from multiple parties and such. Maybe they or some of them find value at this price point. But I'm not so sure of that either. EDIT: Typos
dhash 3y ago
I’ve been using ultorg for a couple years now, very happy to see it reach broader audiences Its’s a game changer tool for me, providing an intuitive graphical query construction interface (via a simple stacked table header, very sum-product like) and cross-db joins. The multi-column report style layouting is also really useful for looking at wide queries with lots of data. I’ve shamelessly ripped of some of eirik’s ideas and wowed people from (especially) the financial world IMO its one of the truest advancements in SQL clients that i’ve seen in a while.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  How does generating queries work with other sources like CSV?
  - hahn-kev 3y ago
    Good question, if I were to do it I'd just import into an in memory SQLite db and let you query that
  - eirikbakke 3y ago
    Ultorg has a bundled internal PostgreSQL database that is used for query execution over Excel/GSheets/CSV/MS Access sources. The tables are automatically dumped into PostgreSQL in an efficient manner when necessary. If you hit the Refresh button in the toolbar (F5 or Ctrl+R), Ultorg checks if there are changes in the original sources and refreshes the extracts if necessary. The same mechanism kicks in if you join tables from different data sources in a single visual query. E.g. you might join a table in a remote PostgreSQL database with a table in a local CSV file. Both tables end up getting extracted locally. There's a "Generated Extracts" folder in the sidebar where you can see a list of table extracts that were auto-generated on the local machine. The process is otherwise seamless, and queries in fact often perform much better locally than being executed on a remote database. The latter is due to no network latency, powerful laptops, and a custom PostgreSQL configuration on the local database that is tuned for single-user ad hoc queries.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
jawngee 3y ago
This is pretty cool, a little clumsy though. The $35/mo pricing seems off to me. DataGrip is $9 a month and feels more capable - though I only spent a couple of hours with ultorg but I didn't see any benefit worth paying 3x for. Again though, only a couple of hours of use. I also don't know why I'd be paying more for a tool than I am for the database service its connecting to.
darkteflon 3y ago
One more vote for a one-off license or subscription tier aimed a solo developers and hobbyists - I would pay for this in a heartbeat and it appears I’m not alone!
veltas 3y ago
Previous discussions I've found: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 May 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 Dec 2021
- dang 3y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 - April 2022 (67 comments) Ultorg: A General-Purpose User Interface for Relational Databases (2020) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 - Dec 2021 (13 comments)

129 points by veltas 3y ago

I love this, but am not going to pay a subscription for this. $420 a year? That’s more than IntelliJ Ultimate! Doesn’t even come with a fallback license that I can use when I stop subscribing.

alad_ 3y ago
+1 It would be nice to have a free tier, even if it limited the amount of time that I could use it per day. 1h/day seems enough for a hobbyist to incorporate this tool into their workflow.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  I'm very curious what a hobbyist could use this for! I've noticed that SQLite itself seems to already have all the functionality needed for an AirTable clone besides the UI, everything needed to generate a pretty decent end user forms interface is basically already in a database schema. sqlite-web is really close, just missing foreign key browsing.
  - _boffin_ 3y ago
    Data is my hobby and i love how it lays data and its relations.
- eirikbakke 3y ago
  Founder here. I launched Ultorg a few days ago, so I still haven't quite figured out if there ought to be a free or reduced-functionality tier yet. There was a big "The fallacy of freemium in SaaS" post from another founder a few weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37832809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37832809), which inspired me to try with "free trial then paid-tier-only" for the initial launch. But I might change it later. For now, I've set a rather long free trial period (21 days).
  - _boffin_ 3y ago
    What are your thoughts about single time purchase and or the JetBrains model?
    - eirikbakke 3y ago
      Looking at IntelliJ Ultimate, they do $599 for the first year, $479 for the second, $359 for the third and onwards. But then they have a "perpetual fallback license"... so I assume many people will buy just the first year and then keep that version forever. For people who prefer perpetual licenses, is this because of a perceived lower total cost? Or for some other reason? Does the sentiment change depending on whether the buyer is purchasing for themselves or for their employer? One downside of perpetual licenses is that at any given time, a large number of different versions will be in use across different users. Though maybe the users don't mind--perhaps they only want to upgrade their software whenever they change laptops.
      - _boffin_ 3y ago
        Let me ask you a question before answering. Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years or do you believe this is feature complete? > who prefer perpetual licenses, is this because of a perceived lower total cost? Or for some other reason? For me, it's knowing that I'll have access to the software forever, but if I want to continue to get valuable enhancements, I keep paying. This is for me, the individual. When it's for a company, I truthfully care about that a lot less, next to nill, but care more about support, invoicing, SLAs, etc... I have IntelliJ Ultimate at home and pay for it every year, but it gives me piece of mind knowing that if something happens, it's still "mine", but just doesn't get any new bells and whistles. Every place I go to, guess what I develop with? IntelliJ. If they don't have it for me already, they will within the week.
        victor106 3y ago
        > Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years or do you believe this is feature complete? This is an excellent question. Not just for this particular case but for anyone planning on releasing subscription SaaS or app

anon84873628 3y ago

Anyone have comparison with Sigma or other spreadsheet oriented BI / analytics tools?

eirikbakke 3y ago
Ultorg founder here. Traditional BI tools work like an Excel pivot table: Put some fields on the X axis, some fields on the Y axis, and get an aggregation or visualization in the middle. The input is always a single table (or, if you have multiple tables, a flat join across all of them). Ultorg is better at working with databases that have multiple tables in them, across arbitrary one-to-many relationships (not just warehouse-style star schemas), and where you want to look at actual raw data rather than colorful aggregations. There are specialized automatic table styles that visualize e.g. how one table relates to others through nested or parallel joins. The data displays you see in Ultorg are also editable--you can commit changes back to the database if desired.
- Scarbutt 3y ago
  Is it possible to generate new tables within Ultorg? Specifically, for the purpose of experimenting with a novel schema using test data.
  - eirikbakke 3y ago
    You can edit data in existing tables, but there is not yet a "Create Table" action. In fact, Ultorg does not currently host any data at all; it is all assumed to be existing in an external data source. So for now I'd recommend doing the actual CREATE TABLE statements manually in e.g. an external PostgreSQL database, but then using Ultorg to edit the data. Schema editing actions (Create Table, Insert Column etc.) are on the TODO list, though.

kgodey 3y ago

Congrats on launching, Eirik!

eirikbakke 3y ago
A friend on Hackernews! Thanks!! Kriti also has a wonderful project in this space, which is non-commercial and organized as a 501(c)(3): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999774
- kgodey 3y ago
  You're welcome! I'm very glad to see Ultorg both generally available and on the HN front page, you've built such a cool interface.

canistel 3y ago

Refreshing to see a desktop application with native widgets (unless I am wrong). Wonder what GUI toolkit is used?

bradrn 3y ago
From the images I’m guessing Qt, so not truly native.
- eirikbakke 3y ago
  It's Swing--same as IntelliJ.

edlinfan 3y ago

Eirik, in case you're still watching this thread: I would pay you $400 for this tool without hesitation. I would also pay for upgrades. However, the $400/yr subscription model is a deal killer. This is fine if you're targeting business users only, but it puts the tool out of reach for all but the most determined individuals. You might want to consider the pricing model used for many digital audio workstations -- a perpetual license for a few hundred dollars, with free patches until the next major version. Then the next major version also costs a few hundred dollars. Rinse and repeat. This gives you a solid income stream, without ripping your software out of the hands of a customer the instant they're short on cash. It also means the program could work without an internet connection or other constant DRM/activation nonsense. This will likely matter for the technical audience you're targeting. Best of luck!

replwoacause 3y ago
I feel this way too. I was excited, as a beta user, to see this go GA but then I saw the pricing and was forced to move on. Pretty steep indeed. But he has a great piece of software here. Best of luck Eirik!
eirikbakke 3y ago
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I always thought of relational databases as a tool for businesses; normally we don't need them as individuals--except perhaps when planning a wedding! Thus the pricing is targeted for businesses and people who get reimbursed by their employers. A second group might be contractors who purchase their own tools. There might be ways to make a separate tier for private or occasional use, though. And recurring vs. perpetual might be a separate question from the actual total expected cost.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  It's a very different conversation when an engineer goes to their manager and says "I think this tool I tried out at home could improve our work" versus "we should buy everyone licenses for this tool that I've never used".
- 3y ago

devmor 3y ago

Echoing the sentiment of other users here - I would happily pay a steep up front price for this software. I will not pay a monthly subscription for software that runs on my machines using data on my machines. Please reconsider the rent-seeking price model, or at least move it somewhere appropriate like an enterprise support tier.

d1sxeyes 3y ago
I don't think this is particularly rent-seeking, just you and the creator have a difference of opinion on the value of the software.
- devmor 3y ago
  Again, the value is not the issue. Perpetual payment is. My post was very clear.
  - d1sxeyes 3y ago
    I wasn’t confused by your post, I disagreed with it. OP expects that their software will continue to deliver value over time, and so has chosen a payment model that reflects that. This is not “rent-seeking”.
    - devmor 3y ago
      If that's true, OP's pricing model could reflect that by charging for updates or having a fallback license for current version. As long as it does not, it is in fact, rent-seeking by definition.
      - d1sxeyes 3y ago
        I’m not sure which definition of rent-seeking you’re using here, but I encourage you to revisit it. Rent-seeking doesn’t just mean “charging an expensive subscription fee”.

wg0 3y ago

Great tool. Nice. Something you want to have. But. I'm not a product, market or pricing expert but even I can tell that this is a very very steep (and recurring per user) price especially in 2023 where businesses and individuals alike are tracking and scrutinizing every single dime spent or to be spent. No kidding but big companies won't mind putting more engineering hours to build their internal data dashboards which would be almost a one time Investment and minor tweaks here and there afterwards whereas most already would have. Individuals and hobbyists can't do that but most can't afford this either. Which leaves to pretty much financial industry (PEs, Wall Street folks and such) that have to juggle Excel sheet Attachments from multiple parties and such. Maybe they or some of them find value at this price point. But I'm not so sure of that either. EDIT: Typos

dhash 3y ago

I’ve been using ultorg for a couple years now, very happy to see it reach broader audiences Its’s a game changer tool for me, providing an intuitive graphical query construction interface (via a simple stacked table header, very sum-product like) and cross-db joins. The multi-column report style layouting is also really useful for looking at wide queries with lots of data. I’ve shamelessly ripped of some of eirik’s ideas and wowed people from (especially) the financial world IMO its one of the truest advancements in SQL clients that i’ve seen in a while.

throwaway290 3y ago
How does generating queries work with other sources like CSV?
- hahn-kev 3y ago
  Good question, if I were to do it I'd just import into an in memory SQLite db and let you query that
- eirikbakke 3y ago
  Ultorg has a bundled internal PostgreSQL database that is used for query execution over Excel/GSheets/CSV/MS Access sources. The tables are automatically dumped into PostgreSQL in an efficient manner when necessary. If you hit the Refresh button in the toolbar (F5 or Ctrl+R), Ultorg checks if there are changes in the original sources and refreshes the extracts if necessary. The same mechanism kicks in if you join tables from different data sources in a single visual query. E.g. you might join a table in a remote PostgreSQL database with a table in a local CSV file. Both tables end up getting extracted locally. There's a "Generated Extracts" folder in the sidebar where you can see a list of table extracts that were auto-generated on the local machine. The process is otherwise seamless, and queries in fact often perform much better locally than being executed on a remote database. The latter is due to no network latency, powerful laptops, and a custom PostgreSQL configuration on the local database that is tuned for single-user ad hoc queries.
  - throwaway290 3y ago

jawngee 3y ago

This is pretty cool, a little clumsy though. The $35/mo pricing seems off to me. DataGrip is $9 a month and feels more capable - though I only spent a couple of hours with ultorg but I didn't see any benefit worth paying 3x for. Again though, only a couple of hours of use. I also don't know why I'd be paying more for a tool than I am for the database service its connecting to.

darkteflon 3y ago

One more vote for a one-off license or subscription tier aimed a solo developers and hobbyists - I would pay for this in a heartbeat and it appears I’m not alone!

veltas 3y ago

Previous discussions I've found: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 May 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 Dec 2021

dang 3y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 - April 2022 (67 comments) Ultorg: A General-Purpose User Interface for Relational Databases (2020) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 - Dec 2021 (13 comments)