Show HN: Base, an SQLite database editor for macOS (menial.co.uk)
I recently released v3 of Base, my SQLite editor for macOS.
The goal of this app is to provide a comfortable native GUI for SQLite, without it turning into a massive IDE-style app.
The coolest features are
- That it can handle full altering of tables, which is quite finicky to do manually with SQLite.
- It has a more detailed display of column constraints than most editors. Each constraint is shown as an icon if active, with full details available on clicking the icon.
This update also adds support for attaching databases, which is a bit fiddly with macOS sandboxing.
I'd love to hear any feedback or answer any questions.
72 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 82.7 ms ] threadEDIT: Very minor nitpick but noticed I changed my icon to dark, but not taking effect. Still using light icon.
Think like MySql Workbench but for multiple users, that would be incredible
https://menial.co.uk/base/buy/
Is that another way of saying you don't want to make MS Access?
I still use Access quite a bit and I think it's pretty great. It's too bad that nothing like that exists for modern databases.
Many years ago, there was a project that tried to do just that using Tcl/Tk, which seems like a fine choice - Tcl is very simple and easy to understand even for on-programmers while its deficiencies aren't really important in this niche, and Tk is one of the easiest UI frameworks around to use. Unfortunately it petered out and I can't even remember the name anymore...
I've been using TablePlus a lot, but there are some SQLite-specific features I'd really like to have in an app:
- Foreign keys enabled by default, so I don't have to remember to enable that in every session.
- Support for loading extensions automatically. I'm using sqlite-vec for example. Right now, browsing virtual tables for that just doesn't show that much, and executing a query just results in "no such module: vec0"
I'll keep an eye on the project. :-)
As an aside, feature bloat is a massive problem with macOS database tools.
I'd happily pay for something basic, native, and pretty like Sequel Ace†, but all of the other options are Swiss Army knives for power users who need to tweak every little thing. I just want to do some queries.
† I'd pay for Sequel Ace, too, if it didn't crash every time I close a tab.
I'm trying to understand who your target audience is? Normally, I think of SQLite as something that only a programmer would use. (And thus these kind of statements happen within an application.)
What kind of use cases are you handling where someone is manually creating / changing a schema?
> Import data from CSV and SQL dump files. Export your results to SQL, delimited text, JSON, and Excel formats.
IE, who's using SQLite in this way, and what are they using it for?
Jetbrains products realize that these binary values are UUIDs and let me edit them easily.