12 ms·

Show HN: Outerbase Studio – Open-Source Database GUI

356 points by burcs 2y ago

We just launched Outerbase Studio, the open-source version of our core database offering. It works in your browser or as a desktop app and supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. What it does: • Connects to MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite databases. • Spin up local databases directly through the UI, even if you don’t have one running. • Manage and query your data in a lightweight, intuitive interface. • Completely open source. Why we built it: We wanted to share the core Outerbase experience with the developer community as a free, open-source tool. It’s simple, fast, and removes the barriers to working with databases locally. GitHub: https://github.com/outerbase/studio https://github.com/outerbase/studio Release Blog: https://www.outerbase.com/blog/outerbase-studio-open-source-database-management/ https://www.outerbase.com/blog/outerbase-studio-open-source-... Try it out: studio.outerbase.com Would love the HN communities feedback, please try it out and let me know what you think!

burcs 2y ago
Happy to answer any questions around this! As far as next steps we are going to be adding in more database support as well as bringing in some of Outerbase Cloud's AI features.
- drewp 2y ago
  Are there comparisons to related projects somewhere? E.g. I've use DBeaver before. Is there some reason I should try Outerbase next time?
  - johtso 2y ago
    Don't think DBeaver supports libsql databases? I think the goal here is to be able to working with Turso / Cloudflare D1 databases etc.
    - burcs 2y ago
      Yeah that's been another big part of this too, making sure it's a simple way to support these new and lightweight but powerful databases!
    - avinassh 2y ago
      it does now: https://github.com/dbeaver/dbeaver-jdbc-libsql https://github.com/dbeaver/dbeaver-jdbc-libsql
  - burcs 2y ago
    I put together this in related to our cloud offering, it's still somewhat relevant for Outerbase Studio even though some features are different: https://www.outerbase.com/blog/the-5-best-database-management-tools/ https://www.outerbase.com/blog/the-5-best-database-managemen... Our goal is to make data accessible through good user experiences and focus. Whether that is being able to spin up a local database directly from the app, or simply making the query experience as intuitive as possible, we are really pushing on making the database usable.
    - vunderba 2y ago
      That page mentions support for noSQL databases, but it looks like this open source version only supports SQL. Just want to call that out for clarification. Is the long term intent eventually to have parity between the open source desktop app and the cloud version (at least in terms of database type support)?
      - brayden_wilmoth 2y ago
        Correct. Our goal is to have all of our data sources across all Outerbase products powered by our SDK - https://github.com/outerbase/sdk https://github.com/outerbase/sdk. Currently the Studio product is not powered by it but our cloud and other offerings are.
stronglikedan 2y ago
I downloaded it, fired it up locally, was presented with a login screen, closed it, and uninstalled it. Sorry, but I don't log into local software.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  I saw that it was AGPL licensed, which was odd to me for something that's supposed to be a client. I don't like the AGPL license because of how overbearing it is, I avoid downloading AGPL'd software, unless its a pure compiled binary. I am probably a little too strict about software licenses, but I rather always have the freedom to keep any forks to myself, don't force me to share code for my one-off project.
  - freeone3000 2y ago
    AGPL still only requires you to share the code if you’re sharing the fork in some form (binary or networked).
    - giancarlostoro 2y ago
      "or networked"
      - freeone3000 2y ago
        Yes, it prevents the AWS case where you take a GPL product, put it behind an API gateway, and suddenly you’re under no obligation to share your changes even though they’re still sharing the product. This product in particular would excel as SaaS, and Outerbase already sells one of those — they’re not going to give you their product, white-label! You’d have to also share your mods, or link to the original. You can still do the above, and even charge for it! You’re just in the “hosted software” business, not the embrace-extend-extinguish business.
        burcs 2y ago
        Thank you for explaining this so clearly. We were very cautious in choosing the license for this exact reason! We love open-source and want to give back fully to the community. The AGPL felt like the most open license that still protects against outright theft — something we’ve unfortunately experienced in the past.
johtso 2y ago
Outerbase Studio is great! Been happily using it to experiment with queries over my Turso database, and see how many rows are being read when optimising. Excited to hear that some AI stuff is going to be brought over, currently do a lot of switching back and forth with ChatGPT, and having your database schema automatically be part of the prompt would be great. I'm guessing visualisation stuff is going to stay part of the paid offering?
- burcs 2y ago
  Thank you Johtso! Glad you have been enjoying it :) Yeah definitely it's been a challenge to think about how we want to bring it over, probably going to do a bring your own key experience for the AI that way we're not eating the costs on an open-source project. Have been thinking about bundling a Llama type experience as well, but I'm not sure if people would want that, would you? Yeah for now it is, although we've talked about also releasing a lightweight version of that haha!
kiwicopple 2y ago
congrats on open sourcing i didn't try it locally yet but it looks like the cloud version can create SQLite databases inside the browser? Assuming the open source version does too, can you also "connect" to those databases somehow?
- burcs 2y ago
  Thank Paul — Supabase has always been such a huge inspiration for us! Yes you can spin up sqlite directly in the browser, and on the local studio version you can actually spin up both MySQL and Postgres instances. You have to have docker running as well, and we will automatically spin up the containers for you, making it a completely hands-off experience! You can connect through them instantly through the GUI without needing to configure anything. We are actually going to be releasing something later this week that will really help with the local dev story by making those local databases accessible from the web
  - thruflo 2y ago
    Would be nice to add support for PGlite [0] to have the same “spin up in the browser” experience with Postgres. Let me know if we can help with it! [0] https://pglite.dev https://pglite.dev
    - burcs 2y ago
      That would be really cool, let's chat! Can you email me brandon [at] outerbase [dot] com?
      - kiwicopple 2y ago
        you can also find some code for "pglite in the browser" here: https://github.com/supabase-community/database-build https://github.com/supabase-community/database-build
        burcs 2y ago
        Awesome, I'll check it out!
nandosobral03 2y ago
The mac desktop icon looks huge compared to the standard macOS apps
- burcs 2y ago
  Whoops I'll get that updated, for some reason it didn't crop the bounding box when I exported it!
  - nandosobral03 2y ago
    Thank you! I've tried using outerbase within turso for my last few proyects and the experience has been great. Looking forward to using the app
teddarific 2y ago
i hate working with DBs via command line, so this looks really cool. curious if your product resonates with a specific segment of developers, e.g. frontend vs backend? Hoping this can entirely replace me needing to do anything DB related in the comamnd line...
- burcs 2y ago
  Yes! I too am not a huge command line fan (unless it's git for some reason), my background is actually in design so it was really painful trying to access DBs at first and the only options were the CLI or tools that look like they were built 20 years ago. That was actually the catalyst for creating Outerbase! We have all types of people using us today, honestly we resonate really well with anyone who needs access to a DB. Frontend folks love us because we're a more modern way to do it and we line up really well with other modern frontend stacks, backend folks like us because we are really focused and make it straightforward to manage your data, and non-technical teams love us because they can actually get the data they need without needing to be a DBA.
jaimehrubiks 2y ago
Does it will it support management of users and permissions? I always struggle with those on the cli
- invisal 2y ago
  Adding user and permission support shouldn't be hard. What database are you using? We can put it on our next roadmap.
  - jaimehrubiks 2y ago
    I've used multiple but recently PostgreSQL is what we are using more. I think it's also the kind of task Platform or devops engineers, who are not usually experts in databases, are often asked to manage along with its deployment, so creating users and permissions is very common.
Lord_Zero 2y ago
Support MSSQL please
- burcs 2y ago
  So we support it in Outerbase Cloud, and we will get to work on adding support for it to Studio as well. In the meantime if you want you can check out our cloud-offering, we have a very generous free tier!
srameshc 2y ago
This is neat. I love the support for both Postgresql and Sqlite and explicit support for Cloudflare D1.
- burcs 2y ago
  Yeah – we love all of these new databases, we actually partner with Cloudflare, Turso, etc... to make sure we can provide the best experience possible.
j1mmie 2y ago
For years I've wondered why a general purpose, high quality, good UX, browser based DB browser has not existed. I've implemented 3 such (not general-purpose) browsers in my career. But I'd be really happy to stop doing that and use this instead. I would love to see a Firestore driver implemented (maybe I'll take a crack at it some day), as I'm stuck in GCP land for the time being.
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  PouchDB and CouchDB already exist
- burcs 2y ago
  Thank you, I hope you can stop building those and use us instead as well :) I've never used Firestore directly, but I did see Firebase's recent announcement about Data Connect. It seems like it could act as a bridge to bring your data into Outerbase. Do you think that would work?
- vunderba 2y ago
  Because it does exist, but it's not free. Jetbrains Datagrip has been around for a decade and has connectors for most database archetypes (mongo, sql, redis, duckdb, etc). Biggest limitation right now is its lack of support for vector style databases like Lance, qdrant, etc.
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    > Browser based
    - vunderba 2y ago
      Missed that - I am a little unclear how being wrapped in electron as an app is necessarily an advantage - I guess it could be valuable if it were pulled out electron, and you could host it as a service.
      - 2y ago
sirjaz 2y ago
Any plans to use tauri? That way you can use the native os web view, plus cut the overhead of electron
- burcs 2y ago
  Great point, I am a big fan of how lightweight Tauri is. We have used it in the past but have got hung up on some of the browser APIs not being supported. I'll have to look into it again, it could have just been a skill issue.
  - brayden_wilmoth 2y ago
    Tauri when we last tried it was using your default browser to power it, which is great in theory. When we went to use newer API's such as the Popover API then browsers like Safari had a subpar user experience for a number of reasons of its own. As much as the performance and lightweight aspects of Tauri are great we also have to weight the consistency of user experience which Electron gives having Chromium built into it. All that said... it's worth us taking a second look to see if Tauri will work for us in this use case!
shreddit 2y ago
Can i put it inside a docker container alongside my pg container and serve it under a path like “/dbadmin” with password protection? That’s my current workflow with pgadmin.
- burcs 2y ago
  Definitely! We actually embed studio as part of another one of our offerings. It's actually iframed in, but you could achieve similar results if you wanted to dockerize it. https://github.com/Brayden/starbasedb/blob/main/src/studio/index.ts https://github.com/Brayden/starbasedb/blob/main/src/studio/i...
  - tronikel 2y ago
    Any plans to add a dockerfile or push images so we could easily launch a container with 0 config?
RadiozRadioz 2y ago
[flagged]
Coraline456 2y ago
[flagged]
mococa 2y ago
I would use it if it weren’t based on Electron. In recent months, I’ve replaced all Electron apps with native versions, and not only are they more performant, but my RAM is now saved for more important tasks.
- distrill 2y ago
  it runs in the browser
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ingen0s 2y ago
Kudos! Following this
d0100 2y ago
Would be nice to have an option of choosing a "compact" interface When you contrast web UI with native GUI, the realspace you lose in the web accumulates fast All that padding makes it hard to see the actual information, especially for power users Compare this with Navicat, or even DBeaver, their native tabs, buttons and cells are almost half the height of Outerbase Studio GUI
- burcs 2y ago
  This is great feedback thank you, we will work on adding in a compact mode!
  - tangoman 2y ago
    totally agree with this comment, a desktop UI should give me all the screen real state I can get, waste as little as possible in empty space.
bottled_poe 2y ago
Could you please add an option to enforce the use of transactions within the SQL input?
- burcs 2y ago
  Great idea, I'll get it added to the roadmap!
maxloh 2y ago
For similar projects, check out: - Supabase Studio (open source, Postgres only) https://github.com/supabase/supabase/tree/master/apps/studio https://github.com/supabase/supabase/tree/master/apps/studio - Prisma Studio (closed source, supporting most popular databases) https://www.prisma.io/studio https://www.prisma.io/studio - Drizzle Studio (closed source, supporting most popular databases) https://orm.drizzle.team/drizzle-studio/overview https://orm.drizzle.team/drizzle-studio/overview
maxloh 2y ago
It would be great if we could self-host it with pre-defined credentials (perhaps using an .env file). This would be useful for demo projects with Docker Compose. For production use, we'll need some form of OAuth support, or users will have to implement their own authentication gateway in front of the Studio server.
- burcs 2y ago
  We support adjusting the JSON config file so you can update it with your credentials! outerbase.json { "driver": "mysql", "connection": { "database": "chinook", "host": "localhost", "port": 3306, "user": "root", "password": "123456" } }
hahn-kev 2y ago
I'd love to try it out, but I get an error about an invalid URL in the console when I try to open a database. Also it does not support Firefox
- burcs 2y ago
  Apologies you had such a subpar experience, I'll look into what is going on here!
pkphilip 2y ago
Good project. The only thing I don't like about it is the dependence on Electron.. because it slows down everything.
8mobile 2y ago
Congratulations on your work! I tried Outerbase Studio and really appreciate the clean and visually appealing design. However, I noticed that it occasionally slows down during use. Looking forward to seeing future updates to make it even smoother!
- burcs 2y ago
  Appreciate the kind words! Will dig into performance and see what we can do to further optimize it!
ibrothergang 2y ago
Great, I'm going to try it
dav43 2y ago
Looks nice and make be helpful. Keep in mind I can’t and most people can’t install this in a corp environment. If you get a pip install or npm install I’d be able to use it through corporate mirrors internally. Make it as easy to run as something like datasette.
- burcs 2y ago
  Would the browser version suffice? If not we support running commands like: $ npx @outerbase/studio \ --port=5000 \ --user=admin --pass=123 \ mysql://root:123@localhost:3306/chinook
vasvir 2y ago
What I found invaluable is the use of Kate (yes the editor) SQL plugin. It can connect to MySQL/MariaDB, Postgres and others. The main benefit is that you can organize your SQLs in files or even better in markdown files. God knows how many times I had to retype the same or a very similar SQL in the past.
vollbrecht 2y ago
It seams that you currently only support Windows and MacOS via your electron wrapper. Are there plans to also release a Linux version?
- Vinnl 2y ago
  Would love to be able to use it to inspect my local databases on my Linux machine, indeed!
  - burcs 2y ago
    Yes, I will add Linux support to the roadmap!
antman 2y ago
Very nice! Are there any plans for a visual query builder? MS Access had a very good experience on that and I am mot aware of any opensource tools that do it.
- burcs 2y ago
  We could definitely do something like that, question for you if you've used any sort of AI -> SQL generator do you think it replaces the need for something like a visual builder? Or is it still nice to be able to construct them with visual blocks?
  - antman 2y ago
    I have good experience in both and I will say that AI sql generators assume unambiguous data estate names and addition descriptions which is not common in large organizatuions.SQL AI is currently an academic exercise
wcast 2y ago
Really nice! The Web UI over DB is also the motivation of more BI oriented tool https://github.com/metabase/metabase https://github.com/metabase/metabase Writing to tables is also possible via actions https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/actions/introduction https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/actions/introduction
L-four 2y ago
All of the browser based database UI's I've tried have a lot of issues when it comes to binary data and very large int's in ways that will corrupt your data.
- dspillett 2y ago
  The large ints thing is because people forget that numerics in Javascript are all officially floating point. The optimisers might often see that they can use real integers for performance, but you can't depend on that so have to assume it isn't happening. Integer numbers are accurate up to 2^53-1 (and down to -2^53) as the IEEE754 double precision type is used, which is sufficient for a majority of tasks, but obviously not all. Native BigInt (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/BigInt https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...) is widely supported these days (has been since late 2020 IIRC, or early 2023 if you waited for LTS releases without the feature to reach EOL) but is not yet widely used (many don't seem to know it is there, or assume it isn't widely supported, or are concerned about performance). Performance isn't usually bad (about 60% or the basis Number type last time I compared) but there are other issues with JSON or with many libraries only supporting Number not BigInt.
Dachande663 2y ago
We currently use Metabase for SQL reporting, so I've been looking for something to allow actually changing values for a while. That being said, I don't think I would want to touch this. Reading through the code, it looks like a) it doesn't actually use transactions which I just find mind blowing and b) the first two files I looked at (api/database) has the schema for a database defined twice so already I worry about the data model of the app, let alone managing my own.
- burcs 2y ago
  This is good feedback, we are working on adding in transaction support to the open source version. For what it's worth, our cloud product wraps everything in a transaction.
- jadbox 2y ago
  I thought Metabase can change values?
  - matthewhefferon 2y ago
    Metabase does support actions for PostgreSQL and MySQL that allow you to write back to your database.
- mustime 2y ago
  [dead]
betimsl 2y ago
Adminer.
Alifatisk 2y ago
Is there a plan to support collaboration? Like two or more users work in the same workspace so that querying and getting the result would happen in real time together. I've had difficulties finding such application. The closest I've been to achieving something like this is vscode + liveshare + some sql management extension.
- brayden_wilmoth 2y ago
  More of the collaboration features and team features have been or are being built into the Outerbase cloud offering. You can already invite teammates, share resources, see whose looking at what databases, and more there.
bko 2y ago
This looks great. I've built something similar. The important thing that I'm not sure if you support is permissioning. Consider you have some email list that you need to maintain and ideally you want to let others maintain. Throw it in a table and give them permission to add rows. There are a ton of things that I consider 'configs' like that and can't believe there aren't strong standards about how to do these sort of maintenance things (or maybe there are but I'm unaware)
Usaz112 2y ago
good!
lacoolj 2y ago
lets swap out pgadmin for this replicate all its functionality, then imma stick this on all our production servers yeeeeeeeah boooooiiiiii
TripleChecker 2y ago
Are you planning to release any 'end-user' features such as reports and dashboards? BI tools like Metabase already offer capabilities for SQL queries and database exploration, so I wonder what additional features or advantages your tool might provide to distinguish itself in the market. Small typo in the footer - 'Compilance' (error report: https://triplechecker.com/s/345418/studio.outerbase.com https://triplechecker.com/s/345418/studio.outerbase.com)

356 points by burcs 2y ago

burcs 2y ago

Happy to answer any questions around this! As far as next steps we are going to be adding in more database support as well as bringing in some of Outerbase Cloud's AI features.

drewp 2y ago
Are there comparisons to related projects somewhere? E.g. I've use DBeaver before. Is there some reason I should try Outerbase next time?
- johtso 2y ago
  Don't think DBeaver supports libsql databases? I think the goal here is to be able to working with Turso / Cloudflare D1 databases etc.
  - burcs 2y ago
    Yeah that's been another big part of this too, making sure it's a simple way to support these new and lightweight but powerful databases!
  - avinassh 2y ago
    it does now: https://github.com/dbeaver/dbeaver-jdbc-libsql https://github.com/dbeaver/dbeaver-jdbc-libsql
- burcs 2y ago
  I put together this in related to our cloud offering, it's still somewhat relevant for Outerbase Studio even though some features are different: https://www.outerbase.com/blog/the-5-best-database-management-tools/ https://www.outerbase.com/blog/the-5-best-database-managemen... Our goal is to make data accessible through good user experiences and focus. Whether that is being able to spin up a local database directly from the app, or simply making the query experience as intuitive as possible, we are really pushing on making the database usable.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    That page mentions support for noSQL databases, but it looks like this open source version only supports SQL. Just want to call that out for clarification. Is the long term intent eventually to have parity between the open source desktop app and the cloud version (at least in terms of database type support)?
    - brayden_wilmoth 2y ago
      Correct. Our goal is to have all of our data sources across all Outerbase products powered by our SDK - https://github.com/outerbase/sdk https://github.com/outerbase/sdk. Currently the Studio product is not powered by it but our cloud and other offerings are.

stronglikedan 2y ago

I downloaded it, fired it up locally, was presented with a login screen, closed it, and uninstalled it. Sorry, but I don't log into local software.

giancarlostoro 2y ago
I saw that it was AGPL licensed, which was odd to me for something that's supposed to be a client. I don't like the AGPL license because of how overbearing it is, I avoid downloading AGPL'd software, unless its a pure compiled binary. I am probably a little too strict about software licenses, but I rather always have the freedom to keep any forks to myself, don't force me to share code for my one-off project.
- freeone3000 2y ago
  AGPL still only requires you to share the code if you’re sharing the fork in some form (binary or networked).
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    "or networked"
    - freeone3000 2y ago
      Yes, it prevents the AWS case where you take a GPL product, put it behind an API gateway, and suddenly you’re under no obligation to share your changes even though they’re still sharing the product. This product in particular would excel as SaaS, and Outerbase already sells one of those — they’re not going to give you their product, white-label! You’d have to also share your mods, or link to the original. You can still do the above, and even charge for it! You’re just in the “hosted software” business, not the embrace-extend-extinguish business.
      - burcs 2y ago
        Thank you for explaining this so clearly. We were very cautious in choosing the license for this exact reason! We love open-source and want to give back fully to the community. The AGPL felt like the most open license that still protects against outright theft — something we’ve unfortunately experienced in the past.

johtso 2y ago

Outerbase Studio is great! Been happily using it to experiment with queries over my Turso database, and see how many rows are being read when optimising. Excited to hear that some AI stuff is going to be brought over, currently do a lot of switching back and forth with ChatGPT, and having your database schema automatically be part of the prompt would be great. I'm guessing visualisation stuff is going to stay part of the paid offering?

burcs 2y ago
Thank you Johtso! Glad you have been enjoying it :) Yeah definitely it's been a challenge to think about how we want to bring it over, probably going to do a bring your own key experience for the AI that way we're not eating the costs on an open-source project. Have been thinking about bundling a Llama type experience as well, but I'm not sure if people would want that, would you? Yeah for now it is, although we've talked about also releasing a lightweight version of that haha!

kiwicopple 2y ago

congrats on open sourcing i didn't try it locally yet but it looks like the cloud version can create SQLite databases inside the browser? Assuming the open source version does too, can you also "connect" to those databases somehow?

burcs 2y ago
Thank Paul — Supabase has always been such a huge inspiration for us! Yes you can spin up sqlite directly in the browser, and on the local studio version you can actually spin up both MySQL and Postgres instances. You have to have docker running as well, and we will automatically spin up the containers for you, making it a completely hands-off experience! You can connect through them instantly through the GUI without needing to configure anything. We are actually going to be releasing something later this week that will really help with the local dev story by making those local databases accessible from the web
- thruflo 2y ago
  Would be nice to add support for PGlite [0] to have the same “spin up in the browser” experience with Postgres. Let me know if we can help with it! [0] https://pglite.dev https://pglite.dev
  - burcs 2y ago
    That would be really cool, let's chat! Can you email me brandon [at] outerbase [dot] com?
    - kiwicopple 2y ago
      you can also find some code for "pglite in the browser" here: https://github.com/supabase-community/database-build https://github.com/supabase-community/database-build
      - burcs 2y ago
        Awesome, I'll check it out!

nandosobral03 2y ago

The mac desktop icon looks huge compared to the standard macOS apps

burcs 2y ago
Whoops I'll get that updated, for some reason it didn't crop the bounding box when I exported it!
- nandosobral03 2y ago
  Thank you! I've tried using outerbase within turso for my last few proyects and the experience has been great. Looking forward to using the app

teddarific 2y ago

i hate working with DBs via command line, so this looks really cool. curious if your product resonates with a specific segment of developers, e.g. frontend vs backend? Hoping this can entirely replace me needing to do anything DB related in the comamnd line...

burcs 2y ago
Yes! I too am not a huge command line fan (unless it's git for some reason), my background is actually in design so it was really painful trying to access DBs at first and the only options were the CLI or tools that look like they were built 20 years ago. That was actually the catalyst for creating Outerbase! We have all types of people using us today, honestly we resonate really well with anyone who needs access to a DB. Frontend folks love us because we're a more modern way to do it and we line up really well with other modern frontend stacks, backend folks like us because we are really focused and make it straightforward to manage your data, and non-technical teams love us because they can actually get the data they need without needing to be a DBA.

jaimehrubiks 2y ago

Does it will it support management of users and permissions? I always struggle with those on the cli

invisal 2y ago
Adding user and permission support shouldn't be hard. What database are you using? We can put it on our next roadmap.
- jaimehrubiks 2y ago
  I've used multiple but recently PostgreSQL is what we are using more. I think it's also the kind of task Platform or devops engineers, who are not usually experts in databases, are often asked to manage along with its deployment, so creating users and permissions is very common.

Lord_Zero 2y ago

Support MSSQL please

burcs 2y ago
So we support it in Outerbase Cloud, and we will get to work on adding support for it to Studio as well. In the meantime if you want you can check out our cloud-offering, we have a very generous free tier!

srameshc 2y ago

This is neat. I love the support for both Postgresql and Sqlite and explicit support for Cloudflare D1.

burcs 2y ago
Yeah – we love all of these new databases, we actually partner with Cloudflare, Turso, etc... to make sure we can provide the best experience possible.

j1mmie 2y ago

For years I've wondered why a general purpose, high quality, good UX, browser based DB browser has not existed. I've implemented 3 such (not general-purpose) browsers in my career. But I'd be really happy to stop doing that and use this instead. I would love to see a Firestore driver implemented (maybe I'll take a crack at it some day), as I'm stuck in GCP land for the time being.

amazingamazing 2y ago
PouchDB and CouchDB already exist
burcs 2y ago
Thank you, I hope you can stop building those and use us instead as well :) I've never used Firestore directly, but I did see Firebase's recent announcement about Data Connect. It seems like it could act as a bridge to bring your data into Outerbase. Do you think that would work?
vunderba 2y ago
Because it does exist, but it's not free. Jetbrains Datagrip has been around for a decade and has connectors for most database archetypes (mongo, sql, redis, duckdb, etc). Biggest limitation right now is its lack of support for vector style databases like Lance, qdrant, etc.
- wiseowise 2y ago
  > Browser based
  - vunderba 2y ago
    Missed that - I am a little unclear how being wrapped in electron as an app is necessarily an advantage - I guess it could be valuable if it were pulled out electron, and you could host it as a service.
    - 2y ago

sirjaz 2y ago

Any plans to use tauri? That way you can use the native os web view, plus cut the overhead of electron

burcs 2y ago
Great point, I am a big fan of how lightweight Tauri is. We have used it in the past but have got hung up on some of the browser APIs not being supported. I'll have to look into it again, it could have just been a skill issue.
- brayden_wilmoth 2y ago
  Tauri when we last tried it was using your default browser to power it, which is great in theory. When we went to use newer API's such as the Popover API then browsers like Safari had a subpar user experience for a number of reasons of its own. As much as the performance and lightweight aspects of Tauri are great we also have to weight the consistency of user experience which Electron gives having Chromium built into it. All that said... it's worth us taking a second look to see if Tauri will work for us in this use case!

shreddit 2y ago

Can i put it inside a docker container alongside my pg container and serve it under a path like “/dbadmin” with password protection? That’s my current workflow with pgadmin.

burcs 2y ago
Definitely! We actually embed studio as part of another one of our offerings. It's actually iframed in, but you could achieve similar results if you wanted to dockerize it. https://github.com/Brayden/starbasedb/blob/main/src/studio/index.ts https://github.com/Brayden/starbasedb/blob/main/src/studio/i...
- tronikel 2y ago
  Any plans to add a dockerfile or push images so we could easily launch a container with 0 config?

RadiozRadioz 2y ago

[flagged]

Coraline456 2y ago

[flagged]

mococa 2y ago

I would use it if it weren’t based on Electron. In recent months, I’ve replaced all Electron apps with native versions, and not only are they more performant, but my RAM is now saved for more important tasks.

distrill 2y ago
it runs in the browser
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ingen0s 2y ago

Kudos! Following this

d0100 2y ago

Would be nice to have an option of choosing a "compact" interface When you contrast web UI with native GUI, the realspace you lose in the web accumulates fast All that padding makes it hard to see the actual information, especially for power users Compare this with Navicat, or even DBeaver, their native tabs, buttons and cells are almost half the height of Outerbase Studio GUI

burcs 2y ago
This is great feedback thank you, we will work on adding in a compact mode!
- tangoman 2y ago
  totally agree with this comment, a desktop UI should give me all the screen real state I can get, waste as little as possible in empty space.

bottled_poe 2y ago

Could you please add an option to enforce the use of transactions within the SQL input?

burcs 2y ago
Great idea, I'll get it added to the roadmap!

maxloh 2y ago

For similar projects, check out: - Supabase Studio (open source, Postgres only) https://github.com/supabase/supabase/tree/master/apps/studio https://github.com/supabase/supabase/tree/master/apps/studio - Prisma Studio (closed source, supporting most popular databases) https://www.prisma.io/studio https://www.prisma.io/studio - Drizzle Studio (closed source, supporting most popular databases) https://orm.drizzle.team/drizzle-studio/overview https://orm.drizzle.team/drizzle-studio/overview

maxloh 2y ago

It would be great if we could self-host it with pre-defined credentials (perhaps using an .env file). This would be useful for demo projects with Docker Compose. For production use, we'll need some form of OAuth support, or users will have to implement their own authentication gateway in front of the Studio server.

burcs 2y ago
We support adjusting the JSON config file so you can update it with your credentials! outerbase.json { "driver": "mysql", "connection": { "database": "chinook", "host": "localhost", "port": 3306, "user": "root", "password": "123456" } }

hahn-kev 2y ago

I'd love to try it out, but I get an error about an invalid URL in the console when I try to open a database. Also it does not support Firefox

burcs 2y ago
Apologies you had such a subpar experience, I'll look into what is going on here!

pkphilip 2y ago

Good project. The only thing I don't like about it is the dependence on Electron.. because it slows down everything.

8mobile 2y ago

Congratulations on your work! I tried Outerbase Studio and really appreciate the clean and visually appealing design. However, I noticed that it occasionally slows down during use. Looking forward to seeing future updates to make it even smoother!

burcs 2y ago
Appreciate the kind words! Will dig into performance and see what we can do to further optimize it!

ibrothergang 2y ago

Great, I'm going to try it

dav43 2y ago

Looks nice and make be helpful. Keep in mind I can’t and most people can’t install this in a corp environment. If you get a pip install or npm install I’d be able to use it through corporate mirrors internally. Make it as easy to run as something like datasette.

burcs 2y ago
Would the browser version suffice? If not we support running commands like: $ npx @outerbase/studio \ --port=5000 \ --user=admin --pass=123 \ mysql://root:123@localhost:3306/chinook

vasvir 2y ago

What I found invaluable is the use of Kate (yes the editor) SQL plugin. It can connect to MySQL/MariaDB, Postgres and others. The main benefit is that you can organize your SQLs in files or even better in markdown files. God knows how many times I had to retype the same or a very similar SQL in the past.

vollbrecht 2y ago

It seams that you currently only support Windows and MacOS via your electron wrapper. Are there plans to also release a Linux version?

Vinnl 2y ago
Would love to be able to use it to inspect my local databases on my Linux machine, indeed!
- burcs 2y ago
  Yes, I will add Linux support to the roadmap!

antman 2y ago

Very nice! Are there any plans for a visual query builder? MS Access had a very good experience on that and I am mot aware of any opensource tools that do it.

burcs 2y ago
We could definitely do something like that, question for you if you've used any sort of AI -> SQL generator do you think it replaces the need for something like a visual builder? Or is it still nice to be able to construct them with visual blocks?
- antman 2y ago
  I have good experience in both and I will say that AI sql generators assume unambiguous data estate names and addition descriptions which is not common in large organizatuions.SQL AI is currently an academic exercise

wcast 2y ago

Really nice! The Web UI over DB is also the motivation of more BI oriented tool https://github.com/metabase/metabase https://github.com/metabase/metabase Writing to tables is also possible via actions https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/actions/introduction https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/actions/introduction

L-four 2y ago

All of the browser based database UI's I've tried have a lot of issues when it comes to binary data and very large int's in ways that will corrupt your data.

dspillett 2y ago
The large ints thing is because people forget that numerics in Javascript are all officially floating point. The optimisers might often see that they can use real integers for performance, but you can't depend on that so have to assume it isn't happening. Integer numbers are accurate up to 2^53-1 (and down to -2^53) as the IEEE754 double precision type is used, which is sufficient for a majority of tasks, but obviously not all. Native BigInt (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/BigInt https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...) is widely supported these days (has been since late 2020 IIRC, or early 2023 if you waited for LTS releases without the feature to reach EOL) but is not yet widely used (many don't seem to know it is there, or assume it isn't widely supported, or are concerned about performance). Performance isn't usually bad (about 60% or the basis Number type last time I compared) but there are other issues with JSON or with many libraries only supporting Number not BigInt.

Dachande663 2y ago

We currently use Metabase for SQL reporting, so I've been looking for something to allow actually changing values for a while. That being said, I don't think I would want to touch this. Reading through the code, it looks like a) it doesn't actually use transactions which I just find mind blowing and b) the first two files I looked at (api/database) has the schema for a database defined twice so already I worry about the data model of the app, let alone managing my own.

burcs 2y ago
This is good feedback, we are working on adding in transaction support to the open source version. For what it's worth, our cloud product wraps everything in a transaction.
jadbox 2y ago
I thought Metabase can change values?
- matthewhefferon 2y ago
  Metabase does support actions for PostgreSQL and MySQL that allow you to write back to your database.
mustime 2y ago
[dead]

betimsl 2y ago

Adminer.

Alifatisk 2y ago

Is there a plan to support collaboration? Like two or more users work in the same workspace so that querying and getting the result would happen in real time together. I've had difficulties finding such application. The closest I've been to achieving something like this is vscode + liveshare + some sql management extension.

brayden_wilmoth 2y ago
More of the collaboration features and team features have been or are being built into the Outerbase cloud offering. You can already invite teammates, share resources, see whose looking at what databases, and more there.

bko 2y ago

This looks great. I've built something similar. The important thing that I'm not sure if you support is permissioning. Consider you have some email list that you need to maintain and ideally you want to let others maintain. Throw it in a table and give them permission to add rows. There are a ton of things that I consider 'configs' like that and can't believe there aren't strong standards about how to do these sort of maintenance things (or maybe there are but I'm unaware)

Usaz112 2y ago

good!

lacoolj 2y ago

lets swap out pgadmin for this replicate all its functionality, then imma stick this on all our production servers yeeeeeeeah boooooiiiiii

TripleChecker 2y ago

Are you planning to release any 'end-user' features such as reports and dashboards? BI tools like Metabase already offer capabilities for SQL queries and database exploration, so I wonder what additional features or advantages your tool might provide to distinguish itself in the market. Small typo in the footer - 'Compilance' (error report: https://triplechecker.com/s/345418/studio.outerbase.com https://triplechecker.com/s/345418/studio.outerbase.com)