208 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 244 ms ] thread
This is a great tool and it makes my life so much easier, so much better than pgadmin4
I work with a huge postgres environment and I use DBeaver every day. Pgadmin is unbearable.
I use DBeaver all the time and love it.

MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, etc...all the tools I need in one app.

I generally try to avoid Eclipse-based projects because they can be very bloated, but in this case it's easily justifiable.

Does it provide any linting or other code checks? I'm curious because I'm looking for something that can teach me proper SQL coding style and practices as I write it.
Yes. At least for Postgres autocomplete is very handy.
Cool, can anyone tell how it compares to Datagrip by jetbrains?
Does datagrip support nosql?
No that I am aware of. But compass for mongo works pretty well. It's fairly simple but to visualize the data and run some queries it's nice.
(comment deleted)
DataGrip:DBeaver::IntelliJ:Eclipse
Not sure what you are trying to say.
DataGrip is essentially a stripped down version of IntelliJ packaged with their database plugin. Dbeaver is similar but using the Eclipse framework instead.
DataGrip is to DBeaver what IntelliJ is to Eclipse.
I use jet brains Datagrip as well. It is great (for PostgreSQL) but the big issue is, it cannot connect MySQL database in utf8mb4 encoding. The issue is there for years. Dbeaver is great, there is no such issue to connect utf8mb4 MySQL!
I love jetbrains products, but DataGrip has always felt like the red headed step child of their lineup.

I use Dbeaver regularly and am very happy with it.

This looks great. I currently use a few separate applications for working with various databases, looking forward to giving this a shot instead.
I use Navicat, and I'm very pleased with it.
Same here, it's hard to beat. And with the addition of MongoDB support, it's really a complete tool for my team.
I’m a huge Navicat fan and it’s the tool I most miss since switching to Linux. Their Linux version is just running the Windows version in Wine.

I’ve been using DBeaver and I’ve been very happy with it though. Paid for the enterprise license to help support it too.

The biggest tools from Navicat that I miss within DBeaver are the data sync and schema sync tools.

As we're starting to move away from MS SQL Server, I'm just starting to use postgresql, and Navicat as a tool. But I'm really underwhelmed by Navicat's features and performance. It doesn't seem like a well-thought-out whole, and lacks a lot of obvious features (let's start with freakin' hotkeys for Run and Run Selected).

I just discovered DBeaver today, and while it's not up to the standards of SSMS (which is an amazing tool) with SQL Prompt, it so far beating the pants off Navicat.

I prefer TablePlus personally, DBeaver just feels clunky in comparison.
Tableplus is fantastic. I've been using it for around a year now.
Sometimes I use it, but data related for sql server, still prefer HeidiSQL.
I would feel uncomfortable saying the word 'beaver' at work.
As a Canadian, I would have absolutely no problem saying the word 'beaver' at work.
Why? Is it a bad word in some language?
Among some the term beaver is suggestive, or even offensive. Think Thelma & Louise; "Damn! I hate that! I hate being called a beaver! Don't you?"

It's a particularly lowbrow bit of slang and not something that worried me when I recently mentioned the name dbeaver in a professional context, although I am aware of it. It pleases me that I spend my time among people that are either ignorant of this matter or are happy to pretend they are.

I'm going to guess the cross over of Thelma and Louise fans and SQL database users is probably fairly low.
courtesy of the late, great, Leslie Nielsen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvWfbIe4X_4

Thanks for that. Time to add "Bad Golf My Way" to the rewatch queue, it was a favorite childhood movie of mine.

I guess a followup question for those who've been talking about this tool with colleagues, do you just casually call it "beaver" or the full "dee-beaver"? I want to call it "dee-bee beaver" but there's a missing b...

Try working with adults who aren't afraid to use regular words
(comment deleted)
Causes of termination at bart3r's company last month:

- Bob unzip a Python package.

- Dennis suggested we hire a "penetration tester".

- Mrs. Fraulein was caught browsing "Jew Tube".

- Helen used an essential software product from a "Pentaho"company for more than three years. Mr. Flanders was so disturbed he bought that company and renamed it "Itachi Vantara".

- Raul was using "Zope" to build our Intranet, until our Purity squad learned it was an insult in Spanish.

- David boasted about installing "OpenSIS" at his university.

- Susan was reported for surreptitous use of "ClamAV".

I also recommend terminating Derek for using "Google". It's not in the blacklist, but it just sounds obscene.

I am missing bigger screenshots though, I tried opening them separate but they are quite small.
I did this as well. I inherently expected screenshots small enough to be mostly unreadable would enlarge if I clicked on them.
Pgcli and PgModeler are usually by go-to these days. (Sometimes pgadmin4 if I need to see stats)
All of my colleagues use postico (I'm the only Linux user at my company), which seems quite nice. Can anyone who knows both tell me how this compares to that?
I’ve used postico, navicat(mac/Linux) and dbeaver.

Postico is very similar to Sequel Pro, simple but effective.

Navicat is the more feature complete option, but using wine on Linux is not cool.

I’m very happy with dbeaver.

I like to try out new tools likes this, but whilst on my mac, and I generally use Sequel Pro for my databases (I use mysql and mariadb drop-ins). I have my database locally in a docker container, where I forward 3306 to 3300. Entering host as 127.0.0.1 with correct credentials and port, it gives me this error: "Could not connect: Access denied for user 'root'@'172.18.0.1'". This does not happen with Sequel, but occurs with Dbeaver. It actually also happened trying TablePlus which is a piece of software that a fellow commenter was mentioning. I'm sure that it could be solved in my configs by allowing that particular IP, which is the local IP of the virtual machine which is serving docker. However, that is supposed to be completely transparent, thus I should be able to connect through 127.0.0.1. As I haven't looked at the source code, it seems like the host lookup logic is flawed, as it translates my `127.0.0.1` to `172.18.0.1`. Why? Dunno. But this occurred in both Dbeaver and TablePlus. Works in my terminal and in Sequel however.
This sounds like a docker network problem more than an issue with dbeaver.

Try binding MySQL to 0.0.0.0 (all interfaces) instead of 127.0.0.1 (loopback). That said, 127.0.0.1 should be fine provided you connect through the service name or the docker container IP), connecting via 127.0.0.1 doesn't make sense. Then again, it's docker on Mac, so I don't really know.

Fwiw, also used sequel pro on Mac, moving to Linux dbeaver was the only thing that came close.

Now I don't really mind either but dbeaver is a bit quirky overall.

I know I can solve that by allowing "everytuldhing" to connect, but that is not my point. Hence my ""I'm sure that it could be solved in my configs by allowing that particular IP"" comment. That it's `Docker on mac` is kinda irrelevant, as it's still just a virtual machine with a somewhat static IP. My point is, that when it comes to transparency on that level, this piece of software does not acknowledge that, but Sequel Pro does. I'm not a particular fan of Sequel Pro, but it just works in these types of case. I'm still expecting, that software like this, would be able to handle this type of "proxy mechanism", so from outside the docker container, I could still connect through 127.0.0.1 to it, thus making the default config adequate. Not sure if this is even makes sense, but I feel, that when connecting through a binding docker port, it should still use the origin IP ie. 127.0.0.1
Great tool and it supports msaccess files
(comment deleted)
I like DBeaver but I've been having some problems with how it handles timeout of connections. I often end up sitting with it unusable for up to 2 minutes because it can't seem to understand that a connection is dead, despite me setting all the available options to use a shorter timeout. I'm sure this is partly due to my specific network conditions but it nearly destroys its usability while other tools (eg: SquirrelSQL) just don't seem to have the same problem.
I've used DBeaver at work on Linux to connect to Microsoft SQL servers and also to some PostgreSQL servers.

It's not perfect but it's not bad. My experience was annoying (at best) to get drivers to work; particular the tsql ones (since Microsoft didn't provide Linux drivers at the time -- I don't know if that's been rectified). Once they're working though, everything else is fairly intuitive.

It's been a couple years since I moved to a different team and no longer need to connect to databases (and can't anymore... yay security). But I've considered using DBeaver at home for personal use.

Biggest benefit for me is DBeaver is cross platform so I can use the same tool on Windows (work) and Linux (home).
I use DBeaver to connect to Oracle SQL (among other things) and it works well for this purpose. I tried other alternatives too but DBeaver felt the best among them (layout, options, and general speed).
Always used it while ddveloping database connected apps in Eclipse. Never let me down.
I've been using in on macOS and it just works.

There are so many free tools for databases and I'm wondering : How do the devs survive with free versions and/or open source?

Don't think donations will amount to any relevant amount.

Woah, that ER diagram functionality reminds me of a tool that I tried a long time ago but which I had since forgotten. Back then the tool in question had too many issues and shortcomings, but they may have developed it sufficiently now.

https://pgmodeler.io/

Being told about Dbeaver and reminded of pgModeler right now is great because I am currently defining the tables for a project I am working on for a client, and as the number of tables grow jumping back and forth between the files that define each of them adds a still small but noticeable overhead. With a ER diagram tool I might be able to speed up a little part of the definition work.

Edit: Hmm, pgModeler might still not be such a great tool https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17693582

My company's IT team won't allow install of non-approved tools. I'm stuck with oracle sql developer. fml.
Pretty sure if it's java based you can download it and run it entirely in user space if that is OK. Of course, making an end run around IT policy isn't always an advisable solution even if it does work.
Yup, I am in the same boat and DBeaver works great just running standalone even without admin rights.
Needs Java. I saw it mentioned in the HeidiSQL thread and thought I would try it. Never completed the installation. Not putting Java on my machine, nope. Yes, I do understand the advantages of Java. Runs everywhere, which is nice. I'm still not installing it.
kind of curious about the passionate avoidance of installing Java - is that an anti-Oracle stance or something else?

(I tend to be the opposite - if I can find a Java based tool to do the job I'll choose that because they tend to be very self contained, don't often require messing around with other OS dependencies ...)

It constantly hassles me with requests to upgrade. Doesn't it sometimes try to trick me into installing something else, too?
Yeah, the Oracle installer does / used to do all those things. Apart from anything else, you will now end up agreeing in the fine print not to use Java for certain purposes. Basically, don't use anything Oracle to do with Java.

Fortunately there are good ways to get it. OpenJDK and Azul have much more hassle free installations now. I personally use sdkman [1], but conda [2] is another very easy way to get java that won't hassle you.

Not that I'm trying to persuade you or anything - I was just curious!

[1] https://sdkman.io/ [2] https://anaconda.org/anaconda/openjdk

Thanks for the reply. You and the others have really lost me about the differences and compatibility of Java, JRE, OpenJDK, sdkman, conda??? Maybe I'm in the middle. I pay enough attention to not want to deal with Java, but I don't know well enough to find other non-Oracle ways. I might research all this someday and lose my distaste of Java.

Gave my honest thoughts on this and lost 3 karma points. Not too bad this time. I still have a few more to spend.

Yeah, it sucks that people will downvote people for legit opinions / experiences rather than actual bad faith comments.

I'm mainly interested because I write a lot of software that needs the JVM to run (I don't use Java itself much, but it comes to the same thing). So it is very useful for me to understand reasons people would reject my software.

The installer comes with it's own JRE just for DBeaver, so you don't have to install Java systemwide for it to work.

And why the hate for Java? Most other languages have runtime libraries or VMs too, does it really make a difference if that runtime code is baked into the exe vs. stored in a separate folder?

Maybe I don't know JRE vs Java well, but I really dislike the constant "update Java now!" messages and the hassle that goes with it.
Ah yes, that's different. There's no need to install any of that stuff when you pick the DBeaver installer that ships with a JRE. It basically just adds another folder into the DBeaver directory.
The hate for Java has absolutely reached comical levels.
Reached? Disdain for desktop Java GUIs has been constant for many years.
I used Dbeaver for years. Once with MS-SQL, which was quite unstable... But no problem with MariaDB, SQLite and PostgreSQL.

Plus, the built-in support of SSH tunnels is a big plus for my use cases!

How is no one talking about https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/

These guys actually fix their bugs. It works on every database known to humans, and also does nearly everything DBeaver appears to do.

This, it's incredible. Amongs many other things, it supports a lot of the navigation/refactoring features of all the other IntelliJ products.
Does it do anything the IntelliJ database plugin doesn't do?
Perhaps, but DBeaver is free while Datagrid is not, in fact it is rather expensive at $199.

For many people, including me perhaps, something like DBeaver is good enough since it's free.

$90 individual

https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/buy/#edition=personal

But you're probably right.

If you are a student it's free.

Also good tools are worth paying for, I have been a subscription user of their tools now for years.

I think it's like $199 for a subscription to the whole suite. If you are a dev (or work for someone who expects you to do dev work for pay) it's worthy spending a few of your coins on good tools.

I stare at these tools all darn day, and they rarely if ever crash. I don't regret moving away from Eclipse almost a decade ago, which used to devour all my system resources and crash and fail constantly.

I agree wholeheartedly, and subscribe to the whole suite of JetBrains tools. Absolutely fantastic value.
Their all product pricing is pretty good value. If you need more than 2 of their tools (while using IntelliJ which covers half of their offerings), then you should switch to all products and quickly get to third year discount.

I use IntelliJ, AppCode and that already means I should be using all products pack which I'm subscribed to.

There are tons of tools in the open source world that are incredible and free. The assumption that you have to spend money on tools does not apply to software at all unless you are working in a proprietary ecosystem.

What is the paid version of grep/ripgrep that works better?

>good tools are worth paying for

Not ALL tools need to be paid for.

Not all WORK needs to be paid for.
That is correct. Trivial example:

If I say I'll do some work for free the we can assume you don't need to pay for it.

Just like I should not complain if you decide not to keep doing it, when the need to pay for bills arises or I happened to abuse from your goodwill.
Do you expect to be paid for your work or also offer it for free and live from donations?
That's 2/3 of a minimal monthly salary in Bulgaria. While developers sure make much more than that (unless they are in public sector), it's still nowhere near the $100k/year starting salary you get in the Valley. And that's still EU, you can go further East...

When saying something is not expensive (few of your coins), consider that it might be just your situation where it's not expensive.

You don't need $100k / year to spend $10 a month but I see the disparity of income around the globe can mean $10 is heavier than others.
It's not the money, it's having to buy it.
> rather expensive at $199

Compared to a six-figure salary? Developers tools are a bargain for what we get out of them.

Developers are hands down one of the cheapest group of customers to deal with.

I've been shelling out for IntelliJ Ultimate for years because I want to support JetBrains. At this point I think I could actually get away with just the open source Community Edition, but it's worth paying them for the effort in my mind.

I love JetBrains, ever since I discovered ReSharper when I was still active in C# some 10 years go. Now I use PyCharm, DataGrip and GoLand on a daily basis and am happy to throw my money at them.
Isn't it becoming cheaper to go with all products pack at that point?
Is it common to buy your own tools in other skilled trades (when you aren't a freelancer)?

I don't mind buying good software, but it feels weird for me to pay in order to make my employer more money. It's not like the productivity boost I get from buying Datagrip is going to get me a raise or a better job.

That said, for software I use in my personal life I can and do pay, and I think we should all be more in the habit of either buying non-trial versions (Sublime, PyCharm) or making small monthly donations (Neovim, iTerm, regex101, QMK, et al).

Mechanics are often required to buy their own tools. Higher end chefs are expected buy their own knives. Machinists are expected to buy many of their own instruments.

It’s not universal but definitely not uncommon.

> Is it common to buy your own tools in other skilled trades (when you aren't a freelancer)?

I can't speak broadly, but when I worked construction, most guys would bring a mix of personal tools and company tools.

(comment deleted)
If the cost of the tool is within the budget of the tradesman or professional, it's more common to buy it out of personal preference for a type or brand of tool.

If no part of your toolset is within your budget, then you're in the working class, since you cannot ever own your own means of production.

That's not what working class means. If you earn money by working, then you are working class. If you earn money investing capital, then you're a capitalist. The working class can be further divided up, but those are all subcategories. A professional or a manager (petit bourgeois) are still working class. If you're a one-man company, then you're still working class.

You only transition once your investment returns surpass your income. Which is why truly rich people don't give a shit about income tax - they don't have income!

That's a fair statement to make, and one that I have heard before but the definition of what constitutes the working class is arguable thus most people predefine it per scope of conversation, and not in a global sense.

For example, in the UK, commonly doctors and lawyers have not been considered part of the working class, regardless of if their investments outside of their profession.

Because a doctor can work independently, and hire other workers like nurses, and attendants, and own all of their tools of trade outright, they are part of the petit bourgeois.

Now you say that petit bourgeois is part of the working class, but many would disagree as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels popularized a more fine grained definition of social classes as follows:

1. the working class - factory workers, peasants, and people who earn only by their labour

2. lumpenproletariat (commonly considered to include vagabonds, criminals or the 'unthinking poor')

3. professional middle-classes (engineers or tradesmen who do not typically hire employees)

3. petit-bourgeoisie - Professionals and small scale managers who hire workers but work alongside them

4. haute bourgeoisie - landed aristocracy & other capitalists who live from investment alone

Now if you are not marxists, you may drop some of the classes or simply call them something else. The lumpenproletariat are sometimes called the "underclass", and in advanced capitalist economies the line between professional middle-classes and petit-bourgeois blurs due to capital infusions from the top. For example, startup owners should rightly be professional middle class, but are upgraded due to VC infusion.

There are other ways to define the classes as well that don't depend on monetary wealth----for example the ladder from: working class to bourgeoisies to gentry to elite/aristocrats, so the terms themselves are fairly overloaded.

Analysing class warfare is a bit of my hobby. I blame my sassy liberal arts professors. :)

In many software jobs it's not possible to bring your own tools unless approved. Even if they are free and open source.
If you don't want to make yourself more productive to make yourself worth more and try to stay at what you're being paid for, that's your option.

I don't understand why you don't to become a more productive person then you may get a better job offer or start your own company where you and your customers will be the one to evaluate your worth instead of a single boss of yours.

Yes, for some $200 is still a very non-trivial amount of money to spend on something. If your situation makes this a no-brainer for you, you're in a better spot than many that make 6 figures.
Tell that to mechanics, carpenters, or any other number of professions that are expected to buy their own tools or do so for security outside of an employer. Still a bargain.
I don't think what you're saying changes what I said at all. $200 is still a large amount of money for people, even if other trades force their employees to buy their tools. I don't see how that changes anything.
Do you actually think people outside of the US make six-figure salary?
I'm not from US but I'm interested in knowing what people make around the world for software engineers.
Average annual salaries _before taxes_ in Western Europe starts between 30k EUR (Junior dev without a formal degree) and 40k EUR (Junior dev with a MS/engineering degree). I guess most people who started at 40k EUR finish their career between 60k EUR (as senior dev) and 80k EUR (as manager).

Then remove 25% as social charges + ~1 month of net salary as income tax + other various types of taxes.

For developers in some countries, that's half their monthly income. Please don't think from only a US perspective.
Not everyone makes a six figure salary and not everyone lives in a country where software developers are paid well. I do, but it’s a very ignorant view to justify expenses.
Is there any studies that show what kind of salary people get in various regions of the world for certain skill set levels?
I guess the StackOverflow salary data would be pretty extensive.
Sure. Tools are still difficult to maintain and develop. I love VS code which is free (as in Microsoft). It has replaced JetBrains Pycharm for me.

That said, I have a JetBrains subscription because their suite has a lot of value if you deal with multiple types of databases (or Java/.Net). Their business model is refreshingly straightforward, the coding is solid and I don’t mind giving them money.

It's about $8 a month and even lower on subsequent years.

But the real power of DataGrip comes by using it in one of their IDE that auto completes table and column names inside code and allows you to shift-click it to get to see the definition and show warning when you specify an unknown field.

The software is great but I would never buy it purely because of their business model.

There is absolutely no reason DataGrip needs to be a subscription service. There aren't any ongoing costs for customers to use it.

It should be a one-off purchase with optional support subscription, maybe requiring re-purchase at major version increments, not this bullshit where you need to maintain a subscription for a license on a binary program you already paid for and installed.

Feels as dodgy as Adobe turning Photoshop into a subscription service

Fuck these business models and the sales idiots who try to apply them to every single product

Just so you know, although not very clearly documented, yearly subscriptions include perpetual license for that specific version.

You can see it on the “buy” page.

It’s still less than ideal, but I pay yearly for their “all pack” product and I feel with the amount I use it I’ve gotten my money’s worth every year.

This. The JetBrains licensing model is great. Subscribe to get updates, with a perpetual fallback license for the last version when your subscription lapsed. Their old versions also continue to work across OS upgrades, etc. If you subscribe, the annual fee decreases substantially for the first few years. This is nothing like Adobe's Creative Cloud.
I thought their fallback perpetual license is actually for the version you had when you purchased it, not for the version that was available when your subscription lapsed?

Not sure if they changed this recently - I stopped following them when they switched to subscription with fairly onerous terms (which they rectified after backlash to ‘mediocre’, but never to ‘fair value’).

You're correct in that the current terms are a result of community backlash, or at least that's how I remember it. What would you consider "fair value" for such a tool? And does that include any period of updates and enhancements?
I would personally be okay with a perpetual license plus one year of updates, and keeping the last version at the end of the paid-for update period. Pretty much what they have, but you get to keep the updates you get, not just the initial version you purchased.

The reason this is more fair is that I am paying for the version and one year of updates. Jetbrains has no right to say at the end of the period that since I did not renew, they are taking back the updates they gave me, as if it was by their grace I had been given the updates. I paid for the updates, I get to keep them.

That said, they have every contractual right to enforce whatever they think is fair, and I have every right to recommend against their products and/or prevent the bulk purchase if I am in a decision-making position about it.

My subscription lapsed just before the New Year and I wasn't able to continue to use the software I had already installed.

In order to keep using it, I would be required to downgrade to the version available at the beginning of my subscription. 12 months ago.

If there are show stopping bugs in that version, then too bad. If it's not compatible with your current projects and plugins? Deal with it.

I used to think like this too, but I've since changed my mind and understand why they do this -- and it can even be beneficial for users. There's a few big problems with the old model:

First, you have to define the difference between "major" and "minor" version. Users expect major versions to have some significant improvements or new features. What this means is as a developer, you have incentive not to release minor features regularly, but instead batch them together so you can do a "major" release.

Second, the sales team now dictates the release cycle. More major releases means more money, but do it too frequently and the user base revolts. In many companies sales dictates the releases, but now if development is late it's messing with the company's cash flow and ability to continue to exist.

Third, the software can never be "done", because that means no more major releases. As a result, unless there is a sustainable stream of new users, you get feature and scope creep.

Subscriptions mean predictable revenue, and make the developer's incentive align with users: keeping users happy. This means keeping the product stable, making incremental improvements, and evolving with features that make sense.

Of course the beauty of the market is you should be able to find products sold both ways, and you can choose.

I absolutely agree, subscriptions are the way to go for making your software business sustainable and better scalable R&D investments to maintain growth. Gitlab is an example of this in the dev tooling space.

I've bought Mailplane v3 for my Mac a few years back. The app did not get new features, only patches. New features came out with v4, which required another purchase. I didn't buy it because v3 is good enough, buying again is a psychological wall. If it was a subscription I'd be happily paying them and happily using the latest version.

Gitlab is a terrible example, they are charging for a SERVICE of providing hosting and support for their higher tiers.

They are not charging a subscription for you to be allowed to download Gitlab and self-host it.

I don't disagree with your points, but you can still sell software in the buy once model and just keep it live. No need for major versions unless they are needed. So the only point remaining is "we get more money this way", and that's something one could not want to participate in.
If you buy Jetbrains stuff you get a perpetual license included. It's just going to be for the initial version.
Except if they decide they don't have any updates to release for a month you just paid them for a month of nothing.

The issue with a subscription for self-hosted or locally ran software is that you are obligated to pay an ongoing fee, without the provider being obligated to provide any service in return. Their terms do not require them to adhere to any release schedule or anything showing that by paying a subscription you're getting X. It's basically a recurring donation in hopes the software you already paid for gets an update.

Imagine if your OS required a subscription for your computer to be usable, even when the developer of your OS doesn't release any updates that benefit or affect you for months, if you don't keep paying your subscription you get locked out of all of your work for no reason other than some marketing douche thought it'd be a good way to squeeze a more regular revenue stream out of their existing customers?

You always have a perpetual license to the last version that your subscription covered. It isn't anything like Adobe's model.
Actually, it's the first version that your subscription covered.
Not to mention all product pack isn't as costly as $50 like Adobe's.
All jetbrains products have a licence witch grants you the right to use the tools you buy forever(Without updates). If you buy a tool in 2019 you get a licence for 2019.1 and updates for a year. So if you never update you only have to pay once.
Except you only get the version that was released at the beginning of the cycle. In other words, when your subscription is over, you have to downgrade to a version that's a year old. Bugs and all.

With most software, this would not really be a huge deal. Photoshop? Who cares. Excel? Meh.

But with Jetbrains products you've got to consider whether the old version is going to be 100% compatible with your existing project files, plugins, keybindings, settings and configurations.

It's quite a gamble IMHO.

So why don't you pay once and keep that version for as long as you want? It's a perpetual license.

If you want major updates, it's not weird to be asked to pay for it, which means continued subscription.

Except if they decide they don't have any updates to release for a month you just paid them for a month of nothing.

The issue with a subscription for self-hosted or locally ran software is that you are obligated to pay an ongoing fee, without the provider being obligated to provide the service you're paying for. Their terms do not require them to adhere to any release schedule or anything showing that by paying a subscription you're getting X. It's basically a recurring donation in hopes the software you paid for gets an update.

At least you can know how it has been and JetBrains has been releasing several updates yearly for most of their tools.

If they quit updating to abandon (which is unlikely when they're making quite a ton from the subscriptions), you can quit paying.

DBeaver support much more database products than Datagrip though.
Nice if you’re only connecting to a single instance, nightmare if you have multiple. DbVisualizer is better imho.
Prolly does not work on redis
Enterprise version, like with Influxdb as well.
DataGrip is great.

My previous workplace used to be locked into the Microsoft ecosystem and the core legacy product was backed onto a Microsoft SQL Server DB.

Over the years we pushed the business to move away from the MS/Windows ecosystem. When this happened, like many others, I looked for a UNIX compatible DB client that supported SQL Server.

First, I tried SQuirreL[1] and it was horrible. I just had to uninstall it and keep looking. I settled on DBeaver for a while as it has some nice features and it did most of the things I needed it to, but it was not particularly polished.

Eventually the business decided to pay for Jetbrain's All Products package which includes DataGrip and from my experience you could say: Eclipse is to IntelliJ IDEA what DBeaver is to DataGrip.

The other product I was looking closely at was Navicat for SQL Server[2], which looks pretty damn good and those who use it seem to swear by it. However, I am not a DBA and for that reason I can't justify the USD$699 personal licence price tag of Navicat.

DataGrip is not perfect, but it's pretty damn close and I think its price tag is well justified.

1. http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net/

2. https://www.navicat.com/en/store/navicat-for-sqlserver/

I paid for and use Navicat and it has always been stable, fast and good. A little pricey as you say, but good.
I've never personally used it, but I'm fairly sure you can use Azure Data Studio[0] for plain MSSQL databases, despite Azure being in the name. I'd be in interested in what people think of it, since I've never seen anyone talk about this in the wild.

[0]https://github.com/Microsoft/azuredatastudio

Have you tried TablePlus? (Not the author but just want to know the experience if you have.)
I haven't! But I was reading about it on this day as well and it looks well received, so I definitely want to give it a shot when I need to regularly use a DB tool again.

    It works on every database known to humans
Our team just bought a bunch of licenses of DBeaver and I think this is only correct if you mean 'relational' databases. We have a MongoDB and Eleastic and I don't believe that DataGrip supports either of these, which was a real drag.

We're fully on Jetbrains tools otherwise (R#, dotTrace and dotMemory, TeamCity as build server) so it was a no brainer for me to want to continue that trend but it didn't check all the boxes for us, despite its clear polish.

I tend to hate any IDE built on Eclipse (which I think DBeaver is), but I've been very pleasantly surprised with how well it works.

1. It's got very nice ER modeling where other tools (Like Oracle SQL Developer) make you jump through a dozen screens and a wizard to make a simple diagram.

2. It's got nice export tools to get your data to business partners in a more convenient way. Sure you can copy tables in pretty much every tool but there's just an 'excel' button that can pop open your current query in a new sheet.

3. It does have a weird delay when opening up databases sometimes where it 'reads metadata' about the table and it can sometimes take a long time to return even the most basic query. But once it's cached that data I've not noticed problems after that.

4. It does seem like the document database tooling isn't as baked as the relation tooling. I routinely get hangs when querying my Mongo collections, which is sometimes a drag. But it hasn't been a huge issue.

Overall, I'd highly recommend the paid version of this tool as it's helped me consolidate: Robo3T, Sql Server Mgmt Studio, SQL Developer, and MySQL Workbench into a single tool.

> It works on every database known to humans

Except any non-relational DBs.

I tried to like it and used it for a few months but eventually got back to SequelPro and it just feels breeze to use when every operation is so snappy not to mention an instant launch.

The embedded DataGrip can be a good tool inside one of their IDE though.