BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface
beebase.sourceforge.io
beebase.sourceforge.io
I wanted to introduce this little, unpretentious piece of software, which is intended as a small programmable database for hobbyists, like a mini Access but with a scripting language for those who like parentheses.
Your opinions are welcome.
Regards,
May I suggest that you have a "Get Started" button right on the home page itself with a very basic tutorial?
[1] compared to the days of filemaker
This could have been the error message instead of generic "Invalid name".
SELECT * FROM logs WHERE KEY = 'blah' LIMIT 10;
/* SQL Error (1064): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near 'KEY = 'blah' LIMIT 10' at line 1 */
I think there is some expectation of technical literacy for the use of a database. This would include being able to familiarize yourself with naming conventions and keywords.
I have personally never seen a database that gives detailed error messages like was requested and I'd be excited to see an example.
I just logged into Grafana and tried writing a simple query. Upon failing I got a reasonably detailed and specific error message: 'parse error: expected type range vector in call to function "rate", got instant vector'.
I also tried XQuery in Xidel and it gave me nicely descriptive responses to whichever mistakes I introduced.
And, at the end of the day, this is a free open source piece of software. The experience could be improved, definitely, but nobody owes it to anyone to do so and it’s important to remember that as well.
You could argue that's not their intent or that it's the case of direct wording than intentionally being curt, but this is the second post in the chain that dismisses the legitimate discussion with additional redress to make sure you let the poster know that it's their problem "punching at shadows" and that their problems are imagined. What a shameful display of lacking empathy.
If you are seriously interested in BeeBase you'll be spending hours learning the basics of the Lisp-dialect and GUI toolkit, getting a hangup on that error message means you don't have that kind of interest. Maybe the empathy got in the way of that, I don't know.
And let's say someone makes a patch that implements a new error message that specifies which of the two rules regarding table names has been breached, then what? More complaints about the next quirk? Some other error message? Begging for a Lua-implemented query language because parens lost the syntax wars of yesteryear, describing it as miserable that it isn't already integrated?
Yes, this is how software development is done, assuming you like your customers.
It's not the commenters above that complained about the error message, they aren't users and highly unlikely to ever become users. Instead you've brought in some unspecified other for unspecified reasons.
Name of the field. Must begin with an uppercase letter followed by further letters, digits or underscore characters. Non-ASCII letters like German umlauts are not allowed.
I find it just a shame that databases as a concept is something that has been relegated to be hidden deep in the backends and accessed only by specialized DB admins or through narrow and leaky APIs; SQL is considered arcane wizardry instead of being suitable for technical business users like afaik it was originally envisioned as.
It is great deployment platform for offices based on FileMaker/database workflows.
For many contemporary use cases where one might have used FileMaker in the nineties, there’s SharePoint lists and PowerBI.
Not until v3 (1995) or v7 (2004), depending on how low your bar is.
you can absolutely write a desktop app as a web app client, but it's a lot less well-lit a path than either writing a standalone desktop app, or writing a full-stack web app.
I'd always relied on ORMs in whatever web application I used to interact with DBs for the most part, but I've recently been learning more about views, triggers, and more complex relations. It's been insightful and I've found that much of what I want from a program like BeeBase is covered by knowing more SQL.
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That being said, I'd love to see what you described too. I don't mean for this to be like the infamous "why do you need dropbox when you have rsync" comment. I just wanted to give an anecdotal alternative to use until someone creates what you described!
I suppose it depends on whether the scripting language can do what vba can, especially with regards to xslx files.
What a nice surprise!
How do you test? Could you automate it?