[HN Gopher] Show HN: Arctype, a cross-platform database GUI for ...
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Show HN: Arctype, a cross-platform database GUI for developers and
teams
Hi HN! I'm Justin, founder and CEO of Arctype, and we're very
excited to share Arctype with the community. Arctype is a cross-
platform GUI (soon to be open-sourced) to manage and query your
databases, with built-in collaboration and visualization. It
currently supports Postgres, MySQL, and SQLite, as well as newer-
generation databases like ClickHouse, PlanetScale, and Yugabyte
(and more coming very soon!). Think of Arctype as "phpMyAdmin
meets Postman". Most of our team grew up learning how to program
using the LAMP stack and we missed the experience of interacting
with our databases using phpMyAdmin. We wanted to bring back the
experience of a simple app that lets you explore and query your
databases, but with an updated and modernized interface. At the
same time, we were heavily inspired by the ease-of-use and
collaboration features of Postman. We wanted to create a super
useful, collaborative app like Postman that your whole team uses
for development--but for databases instead of APIs. We have a few
thousand developers using Arctype today but we haven't shared it
with the HN community yet-we're excited to hear your feedback! We
also have a very active Discord community at arctype.com/discord
where developers can ask questions and talk about databases/SQL.
I'm sure the community has a lot of questions, so we've compiled a
list of the most common ones we get: "Why isn't Arctype open
source yet?" It will be soon! We've been focusing mostly on
features that users have been asking for, as well as performance,
stability, and security. We're not completely happy yet with the
documentation and development experience of contributing to
Arctype, but this will be a core focus for us in the coming weeks.
We just want to make sure it will be very easy for the community to
contribute once we publish on GitHub. "How does Arctype make
money?" Arctype is free (and will be free forever) for most
developers. We have a typical SaaS model for large teams based on a
per-seat license as well as an enterprise version that companies
can run on their own infrastructure. "Why is Arctype built using
Electron?" We wanted to make it easy for anyone to use Arctype-
Electron is currently the most practical solution to make it cross-
platform and also accessible via a web app. Apps like VSCode and
Discord have shown that it's possible to achieve decent performance
so we're confident that over time the advantages of developing on
Electron will outweigh the slight performance hit compared to
native apps. "Does Arctype need an account?" You can use Arctype
without an account or you can login via email or Google. Certain
features such as sharing queries and dashboards with your team
require an account. "Is Arctype secure / does it store
credentials?" All of your credentials are stored locally, and
queries are also executed locally on your machine. We do have a
feature that lets you automatically share your credentials to your
team, but that is strictly opt-in, and all credentials are
encrypted on our backend. Additionally, we have an enterprise
version that companies can run on their own infrastructure for
organizations that have stringent security requirements. If you'd
like to learn more, we have more info at arctype.com/security.
"Does Arctype use any analytics software?" Arctype has usage-based
analytics and error reporting (we use Sentry) that we use to
improve the app and to help us fix bugs/crashes. However, this can
be turned off. Additionally, Arctype can be used fully offline.
"Why doesn't Arctype support X database?" Email me at justin at
arctype.com :) We'll make it happen.
Author : justindeguzman
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-05-25 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arctype.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arctype.com)
| alexvoda wrote:
| >"Why is Arctype built using Electron?"
|
| Have you considered transitioning to something that uses the
| system WebView like Tauri or NeutralinoJS? If you did, what were
| the blockers?
| Klonoar wrote:
| System Webviews are not a replacement for what Electron
| provides.
|
| I will, once again, link to the comment _on this very site_
| from a Slack engineer who explained why they moved _from system
| provided Webviews_ to Electron:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18763449
| justindeguzman wrote:
| We started building the app about two years ago where these
| frameworks were a lot less mature (and I still think Electron
| is the most battle-tested today). If we were to start over, I'd
| definitely consider Tauri or using Rust directly for a lot of
| the app. I suspect over time we'll slowly transition parts of
| the app to more native code.
| ysleepy wrote:
| I just downloaded it to try it out but it connects to like 4
| domains on startup and after blocking internet access I cannot
| continue by clicking "Continue without account". I downloaded
| 240MiB, it shouldn't need to download any more stuff to run.
|
| arctype.com, intercom.io, sentry.io and s3.amazonaws.com.
|
| These all happen while the window isn't even loaded on first
| start.
|
| I get that I'm not entitled to anything, but jesus, I dislike the
| electron age. Well, not that other apps are much better, I'm just
| sad.
| justindeguzman wrote:
| After you create an account or click "continue without an
| account", all errors/crash reporting can be turned off from the
| Settings page. In the future, we'll add an option to turn this
| off in the initial page.
| ushakov wrote:
| why isn't it turned off by default?
| mbreese wrote:
| Because then no one would turn it on?
|
| I get it though... I don't really want my database access
| tracked either. Maybe it would be better to include this as
| part of the account creation process. At least then you can
| tell the user what you're collecting and why.
| ushakov wrote:
| hard disagree
|
| they should store crash reports locally and next time i
| open the app ask me whether i want to send them or not
|
| what they decided to do instead is spying
| [deleted]
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Calling home, AWS and Sentry (Error tracking) is very
| reasonable. Intercom is the only "eh" one and it's not even
| that bad.
| silax wrote:
| Do you run your whole dev environment with the internet off?
| glitchcrab wrote:
| You're completely missing the point - it's the principal of
| the matter in question here. The app _should_ work offline,
| even if that's not how your actual environment is configured.
| mixedCase wrote:
| Bummer about Electron. My workstation can take it with flying
| colors, but I also work from a laptop at times and just having
| 3-4 instances of VS Code, a browser, and a communication app
| drags my poor 16GB RAM T490 through the mud, to the point I'm
| working on replacing VS Code despite how fast it helps me get
| started with new languages compared with Neovim.
|
| FWIW: I would pay 100$ yearly for a JetBrains like license to a
| solution like this written in something like Qt or Gtk that could
| successfully replace DBeaver for me.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| This is one reason I'm bullish on some of the new UI frameworks
| coming out of the Rust community in particular. For example
| https://github.com/iced-rs/iced looks quite good.
| ushakov wrote:
| i like slint (sixtyfps) better
|
| https://slint-ui.com
|
| it's actually written by Qt folks
| [deleted]
| jachee wrote:
| "Send download link" is such a dark pattern.
|
| Just put a demo on the site.
| msyoung2012 wrote:
| You want to download a DB client on mobile? There's a DL link
| on desktop.
| [deleted]
| eatonphil wrote:
| > It will be soon! We've been focusing mostly on features that
| users have been asking for, as well as performance, stability,
| and security. We're not completely happy yet with the
| documentation and development experience of contributing to
| Arctype, but this will be a core focus for us in the coming
| weeks. We just want to make sure it will be very easy for the
| community to contribute once we publish on GitHub.
|
| Sweet! Excited to have you join the community of open-source data
| tools. :)
| ushakov wrote:
| they didn't say when!
| eatonphil wrote:
| True but you don't get internet points for saying something
| will be open source and not doing it.
| t3hGrandPoobah wrote:
| long time postico user, this is my new favorite sql client
| especially since we now have multiple database vendors and I can
| tab through each one with a nice UI to boot!
| agucova wrote:
| Is there any plan to expand to things like database modelling?
| I've been searching for a good modelling tool with automatic SQL
| generation, but most software is either legacy or very expensive.
| ravivyas wrote:
| <3 Arctype. Query Variables & visualisations are awesome
| features.
|
| Disclaimer: Worked with them in the past
| dliff wrote:
| I found out about Arctype a while ago when I started writing for
| their blog about SQL, a topic I really enjoy. I'd recommend
| checking out their product if you spend a lot of time in SQL
| databases: it has tons of cool features, a nice flow & layout,
| and it might just be your thing.
| felixsch wrote:
| Really excited to see what happens with this project!
| mhamann wrote:
| As the only SQL client with native support for PlanetScale,
| Arctype is definitely useful from that perspective. I also like
| the UI and find it pretty easy to use.
|
| In my admittedly limited experience using it, I found that some
| MySql datatypes seemed to be missing from the table editor (e.g.,
| `TEXT`). Not sure why this is and I haven't had time to dig
| further.
|
| It's promising, and way better than even some of the other paid
| options. (Like, what is DBeaver even doing??)
| eatonphil wrote:
| DBeaver is the main database IDE I've used. What are your
| issues with it? The UI is not the most beautiful. My biggest
| gripe that I can remember was that I needed an extension for
| SSH that kept getting uninstalled after every update of
| DBeaver.
| justindeguzman wrote:
| We <3 PlanetScale. If we have some data types that aren't
| showing up for you, please let me know at justin at
| arctype.com, we'll get those fixed asap!
| silax wrote:
| This is a great product. Surprised there's not a popular version
| of this already. Bummer all these people who apparently are too
| covert to use web apps are sucking the air out of your post.
| sanketc wrote:
| We have been happy customers of Arctype for a few months. What
| started as a nice to have tool has now turned into a must have
| for our team in terms of sharing queries, and browsing data.
| epberry wrote:
| I love Arctype. Time-to-visualization is one of its best
| features. You can go from a CSV to SQL query to shareable chart
| in like 3 clicks. Also the focus on fully offline usage is a nice
| change of pace.
| ushakov wrote:
| > Apps like VSCode and Discord have shown that it's possible to
| achieve decent performance
|
| the difference is that they have the resources and employ people
| who work full-time to _not_ make Electron suck
| alesua93 wrote:
| Hi! I've been using Arctype as my daily driver for DB interaction
| for the last month or so and asides from a few quirks here and
| there my experience has been really great so far! Excited to see
| where the project goes.
| justindeguzman wrote:
| Feel free to email me about the quirks at justin at arctype.com
| and we'll get those fixed for you :) Thanks for using us!
| infogulch wrote:
| Neat product. I think that dynamic UIs for general purpose
| databases is an underexplored space, I'm happy to see another
| entrant. How does it compare to Ultorg [0] [1]?
|
| [0]: homepage: https://www.ultorg.com/
|
| [1]: 10m video: https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/ultorg-a-user-
| interface-for-r...
| micahjm wrote:
| I tried Arctype a couple month ago and really liked the UX.
|
| Unfortunately, as I used it week after week I kept running into
| cases where it was really slow or completely unresponsive (with
| no error message or loading indicator), or where it simply was
| consuming a lot of resources on my Mac. I got in the habit of
| waiting a few seconds, giving up, killing the app and restarting
| it.
|
| To be fair, part of the issue may have been me tunneling to a
| free Fly.io postgres database, which wasn't particularly fast. I
| eventually got so frustrated I paid for Postico (a barebones
| native MacOS app), and couldn't be happier.
|
| I realize it takes a lot of time and expertise to build a complex
| cross-platform web app that doesn't have memory leaks and
| performance problems, and I hope Arctype will get better over
| time (like the VSCode or Slack apps). Looking forward to trying
| it again at some point.
| justindeguzman wrote:
| Hi Micah, thanks for the feedback! We had a particularly nasty
| memory leak for some Mac users about two months ago (likely
| when you used it) but that's now since been fixed. I appreciate
| you giving us a try!
| ushakov wrote:
| i'm currently using TablePlus for Mac and it's a native app,
| which you pay $79 for and can own for life
|
| https://www.tableplus.com
|
| how does your product compare to TablePlus?
| Diggsey wrote:
| There's a million fancy looking database clients, and yet I'm
| still using the crappy built-in MySQL Workbench that crashes if
| you look at it the wrong way.
|
| Why? Because I need to be able to do more than just run queries.
| I need to be able to manage users & permissions, see the current
| server configuration, kill connections from other clients if
| necessary, etc.
|
| The collaboration features are a nice touch, that certainly makes
| this stand out compared to others, but if I still need to use
| another client as well then it's just not going to work...
| tomschwiha wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Navicat, been using it for years.
|
| https://www.navicat.com/en
| noduerme wrote:
| MySQL Workbench is indeed a mess. If you're on a Mac, Sequel
| Ace (formerly Sequel Pro) is great and has all the features you
| mentioned.
| pageandrew wrote:
| Any recommendations for Postgres?
| ushakov wrote:
| TablePlus
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| +1 for Sequel Ace. It's fantastic.
| msyoung2012 wrote:
| Arctype is super cool and I've yet to find a better DB client out
| there!
| cssanchez wrote:
| I think it's a bit weird to compare yourself to Postman rather
| than Metabase which is in your space. However Metabase is fully
| about visualization instead of editing data directly, which is
| extremely dangerous on a tool like this.
|
| How focused are you on providing top notch visualizations such as
| maps with pins using OSM or custom GeoJSON maps, and other more
| dynamic type of data vis?
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(page generated 2022-05-25 23:00 UTC)