A lot planned, not much built. Just started so follow along if it sounds useful! Also see my prior thoughts on the topic here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41286912

Sqratch - https://github.com/jkcorrea/sqratch

This category of tools definitely scratches a big part of the itch here. But you still end up needing a db client for a long tail of other tasks. So now your db knowledge is spread across 3+ tools: shared queries/charts in Metabase, personal queries in Postico, schema defs and SQL files in your code repo, Notion, etc.

I think you've got an opportunity to consolidate all that into 1 tool in the same way Postman did for APIs

> Postgres in particular makes a lot of schema information available, but very few database clients make full use of it. Completely agree. Also just the industry consolidation around the pg ecosystem in general will lend itself to better tooling potential (e.g. Supabase's LSP project).

> I am currently working on a mobile-first Postgres client. Great that you're working on something new here! If I may ask - why mobile-first? That's not something I've particularly needed tbh (sample size of 1 of course)

Not that that should stop you from trying of course :)

1) pg.new is neat, but honestly I don't see why I'd use it when I can do the same thing directly inside my drizzle schema dir using Cursor's Composer UI, which has full context on my project. I know not many are using Cursor right now, but it's hard to fathom these kind of features don't become part-and-parcel of code editors soon..

2) I actually find it painful to have to login to Supabase on the web to manage the database. I never use the table editor, snippets, etc. I want a native app I can CMD+Tab to.

Don't mean to be rude, just objective so you can feel my pain as a user.

In terms of the Notebooks, yeah I meant like Jupyter Notebooks. I've experimented with having a shared Notion or markdown files committed to repos in order to

A) save & search for snippets of SQL for the team/future me

B) document the "why" along with each step in a playbook.

The issues with this are

1) its detached from our normal workflow and quickly becomes outdated relative to our schema/business needs

2) to run the queries you have to copypaste back into a SQL tool

3) queries are hardcoded for certain values. If I have a report I run daily, every day I have to go in and manually update the `row.timestamp BETWEEN 'YYYY-MM-DD' AND 'YYYY-MM-DD'`, or if its a customer support workflow I have to replace the customer's ID everywhere. I'd rather have variables at the top I can reference throughout the queries, either as a code block like in Jupyter NB, or maybe some variable UI a la Insomnia/Postman

Trying out https://stack-auth.com/ which just launched on HN, mostly out of OSS solidarity

-- The problem/rant

I've grown increasingly frustrated with how archaic the modern story for basic database adminning has become. So many aspects of the developer experience have improved dramatically in recent years, but it feels like database tooling is one massive vertical hasn't received much the same TLC.

Do people just not use SQL editors that often? I find myself constantly cmd-tabbing to Postico to check/modify some rows either during development or to resolve prod issues. But the second I need a more advanced/relational filter it's either a lot of painful clicks away or just impossible to do through the table UI and now I have to write a query from scratch.

If it's a commonly recurring task you can save the query, but now I have hundreds of these saved queries all with slightly different names to the point where it's less taxing to just write a new query then hunt down & slightly modify an old one.

Collaboration is non-existant. I'm forced to share these queries via slack or committing to a `misc/*.sql` folder in our repo which feels awkward.

Tools I've tried include Postico, DBeaver, TablePlus, Beekeeper Studio, PopSQL, and various VSCode extensions. I don't need features around DB Ops, I use Neon/Supabase/etc and just hope I never have to think about DB ops. I almost don't care about SDL tasks either, I mainly do that through my ORM (s/o Drizzle)

-- My request

Here's a braindump of features I frequently desire. I would pay for a tool that did even ONE of these, but I think all are very possible and would 100x the value of an editor to me:

    - Intuitive filtering UI. You know my `id` column is a text, why is the default filter operation `>`. I almost never want that for string cols. Let me type "yesterday at 3pm" in a timestamp filter. Let me fuzzy search my entire DB (obv this is hard for large dbs)
    - Relational filters. I should be able to filter by properties on relations. I'm often only given a username when solving a prod issue, and now finding their records in other tables becomes a 2-step process of finding the user's ID then using that in a filter on the table I care about
    - Embedding & formatted columns. I have various reports as custom queries/views that I export as CSVs weekly to give to teammates. I wish I could just embed this view as an iframe in our internal dashboard. If you're feeling generous, allow me to format the columns like Airtable or even make charts based on the view. This could easily become a massive business in its own right.
    - SQL language server/intellisense (h/t https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres_lsp). Need I say more?
    - AI autocompletion & generation (a la Cursor). My current workflow is to cmd+tab to my ORM definition file, ask cursor to come up with a PSQL query for X table for Y problem, then cmd+tab back to Postico to run it.
    - Notebooks. I want to create playbooks to share with my team. Post-mortems, "here's how  I debug XYZ production issue", etc.
    - Omnisearch. Let me CMD+K and fuzzy/semantic search across my saved queries, tables, etc.

Email in bio if you're interested in taking this up and want to chat more

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41286912

Points: 11

# Comments: 15

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34912814

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

It's my experience that psychedelics can help open your mind to different perspectives and spot unaddressed issues (I believe they're issues you just aren't "allowing" yourself to see/address), but to just take it in a clinical setting and expect it to work some magic on you.. Idk.

K can be incredibly dissociative in recreational doses & this person was given ~10-20x a recreational dose - with very little warning of the gravity of the effects. I can totally imagine why it was such a terrifying experience!

I agree with another commenter about the importance of mindset and setting. For most people, even getting to the point in their lives where they can & are willing to take psychedelics (non-clinical settings) is a long journey that shouldn't be discounted. Not saying we shouldn't pursue it in more clinical ways, just that the journey & mindset BEFORE taking the drugs is just as, if not MORE, important than the drugs themselves

Isn’t that inherently what happens when you play telephone across time and cultures? You end up with stories stripped down to the essence, the most important advice from those who came before us boiled down.

Are you advocating that when we find what works for us we don’t share that finding with others? I think that’s exactly what’s wrong with the “science is the only right answer” mindset..

Just browsing the replies here I see many guys saying effectively “Well I watch tons of porn and my penis still works” which is kind of a level 1 analysis on how porn might be affecting their brain

Replace all instances of laughing with friends with masturbating alone in your room and tell me that’s a good, meaningful life you want to live

I know a number of highly intelligent people in the sciences who make decisions like this (searching/waiting for Science to tell them what’s right) and who laugh at me when I follow intuition/folk knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, academic research is an amazing thing. I follow many research backed protocols for fitness, diet etc. But I also think when it comes to systems as complex as our bodies, there’s much collective wisdom in our intuition and societal traditions that science hasn’t and may never catch up to.

Extism seems like a great fit for this, I’ll definitely be checking it out :)