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BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface
- LkpPo 2y agoGood 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,
- spxneo 2y ago[flagged]
- hiatus 2y agoI don't understand —screenshots and a feature list are among the first few links at the top.
- spxneo 2y agoguess I missed it, im used to scrolling and seeing screenshots and features on splash page. I must admit I wasn't very interested in this piece of software to begin with.
- CRConrad 2y ago> guess I missed it, im used to scrolling and seeing screenshots and features on splash page. Sigh... A generation conditioned by horrible endless-scroll single-page "applications" (web sites).
- jeremyjh 2y agoSure buddy. I began using the web in 1996 and I had the same reaction.
- sigzero 2y agoThat says more about you then it does about the site. :)
- lazyasciiart 2y agoYes, I believe it is intended to say that he is definitively not part of “ A generation conditioned by horrible endless-scroll single-page "applications" ”
- CRConrad 2y agoWell, seems at least part of older generations are conditioned too. I never specified any hard age limits, did I?
- CRConrad 2y ago> I began using the web in 1996 BTW: So did I. Or if it was '95.
- dleeftink 2y agoI think -- if in jest -- this is succinct assessment of the state of the web. Endlessly scrolling on things we aren't remotely interested in.
- anonzzzies 2y agoGuess you also didn’t see a site for a long time where you have to press buttons to do things instead of just scroll down? Not meant to be snarky: I got the same comment on our saas products. Guess people want ’sales sites’ to be one pagers; I don’t exactly know why. Personally I don’t see the difference between scrolling down or pressing buttons but he.
- spxneo 2y agoI just shared my opinion, we disagree. I'm okay with this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- kitd 2y agoOP hasn't replied to you AFAICS
- TeMPOraL 2y agoConvenience and familiarity. I'm ashamed to admit, but I too expect to see screenshots and features listed inline on the landing page; it's been a common practice in the last 10 years or so. > Personally I don’t see the difference between scrolling down or pressing buttons Scrolling is untargeted, you just move the wheel or drag your fingers back and forth. Pressing buttons requires you to identify such elements, target and then click them. Both sound trivial, but they're different classes of trivial.
- calgoo 2y agoInteresting as I find the complete opposite for myself; I love the easy access to all options at the top instead of doom scrolling for possible information usually hidden between horrible animations that slide in and out, breaking natural scrolling etc.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- psadri 2y agoGreat! This reminds me of FileMaker and similar RAD desktop tools. Curious to know what kind of projects people are using it for?
- pkphilip 2y agoVery 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 2y agoThanks for sharing. I was looking for something just like this actually.
- ComodoHacker 2y agoIs there any technical docs on internals? How it does I/O, caching, consistency, concurrency etc.?
- KaiserPro 2y agothat'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 2y agoAmiga?! Just reading this warmed my heart. Awesome project - congratulations!
- SuperHeavy256 2y agoMan, that tutorial was difficult to read. No images or GIFs?
- prmoustache 2y ago[flagged]
- wolletd 2y agoThe point of images in texts isn't to target illiterate users, either. A tutorial for a graphical user interface would surely benefit from some screenshots of that very graphical user interface thrown in there. The tutorial literally explains menus that pop up in text. Some screenshots would've helped.
- vanjajaja1 2y agothis is exactly the attitude i'd expect from something hosted on sourceforge. I was also surprised that a db advertised as graphical did not have a screenshot on the front page
- hans_castorp 2y agoThere is a link to "Screenshots" right at the top of the page.
- spxneo 2y agoim actually not sure whats going on here in the comments it feels like the same person is posting under different nicks for what purpose I do not know.
- larodi 2y agoCool 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 2y agoHow does it compare to MS Access or FileMaker?
- layer8 2y agoIt runs on the Amiga.
- vincnetas 2y agoOk 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 2y agoIt's explained on page 8 of the manual, in the tutorial section.
- carlmr 2y agoExactly, it's a bad error message if you need to read 8 pages of tutorial to get that basic feedback.
- cess11 2y ago[flagged]
- spxneo 2y agonot sure if you are trolling or serious here but thats a bad user experience and also very condescending
- cess11 2y agoIt's not about a user, it's about someone declining to become a user because the manual is distributed as a separate PDF. I see two solutions for this problem, either use another software or hire someone to adapt this one to you. As a user you know the basic constraints on table names, if you don't you can't use the software.
- KronisLV 2y ago> It's not about a user If your users are developers, then this mindset will inevitably lead to poor developer experience (DX). That is a stance that someone could take, but their software would be then only used in spite of the DX, not because of it. In general, this would lead to a more miserable experience. I don't think that's good, even if it's just a lot of small annoyances along the way. Here's a Dylan Beattie talk that touches upon this very thing: https://youtu.be/BIkXid_pBiY?t=629 https://youtu.be/BIkXid_pBiY?t=629 (specific timestamp to relevant bit)
- vincnetas 2y agoApparently 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 2y agoYou can export to SQLite3, but not import it back in again.
- vincnetas 2y agoWhat 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 2y agoNo? I haven't tried it yet, but in the docs it says "SQLite3 file format, and import and export facility"
- brktime 2y agoYes, BeeBase uses the sqlite3 file format. You can make changes to the sqlite3 file with other SW, but there are some rules to be followed if you want BeeBase to work with those changes. More info is in the manual here: https://beebase.sourceforge.io/index.php?page=documentation&mbdoc=6&lang=en#SEC66 https://beebase.sourceforge.io/index.php?page=documentation&...
- aitchnyu 2y ago30 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 2y agoReminds me a bit of Lotus Agenda. That never made it out of DOS (except in Hobbs, the unreleased prototype Windows version)
- zokier 2y agoHonestly 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 2y agoI haven't seen anything that beats the UI and UX of FileMaker Pro from the 90s.
- nxobject 2y agoTruthfully, 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 2y agoHas FileMaker Pro changed / improved / worsened significantly since then? The latest release is FileMaker Pro 2023.
- detourdog 2y agoIt 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.
- 2y ago
- egeozcan 2y ago> BeeBase is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Amiga What a nice surprise! How do you test? Could you automate it?
- nxobject 2y agoBeyond 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 2y agoTry: https://www.nubuilder.com https://www.nubuilder.com https://github.com/nuBuilder/nuBuilder-4.5 https://github.com/nuBuilder/nuBuilder-4.5
- Willamin 2y agoLately 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 2y agoTry good ol' PHPMyAdmin from your local webhosting company!? The view on a mobile screen in portrait mode is not even that bad.
- sesm 2y agoFrom 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 https://clojure.org/reference/lisps
- brktime 2y agoYes, it is close, although it is completely homebrewn and lacks a lot of functionality of common lisp. Think of it as taking the syntax from lisp, some basic lisp functions, and then adding functionality for programming your database.
- hgyjnbdet 2y agoI 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.
- ranger_danger 2y agoReminds me of Microsoft Access in the 90s. We used that to run our entire repair business and it worked great.
- Self-Perfection 2y agoI believe I have seen something similar on Maemo but cannot find it now.