Open-Source CLI tool to inspect databases fast

I've started using Emacs as a database explorer.

So, Emacs has a built-in interactive SQL mode (M-x sql-mysql / postgres / sqlite). This mode opens a SQL shell similar to what you would see in a terminal. From there, you can do your selects, inserts, updates, etc.

You can also send strings from a different buffer to your SQL shell buffer.

Now in Emacs you can very easily evaluate Lisp code to define functions, redefine functions, and execute arbitrary expressions. You can also wrap your SQL expressions inside of Lisp code. By doing so, you can take advantage of Emacs's built-in Lisp evaluation tools to interact with your SQL database.

So instead of opening a shell in your terminal, selecting a database, and writing select statements to inspect your DB, you can instead...

In Emacs, create a file called something like "sql-notebook.el". Inside that file you write Lisp expressions to execute SQL queries. To execute those queries, you move the cursor over it and just run the command `eval-last-expr` (I have this bound to Ctrl-c Ctrl-c). The results of the evaluated expressions appear in your interactive SQL buffer.

The obvious advantage of this is that you end up creating a library of often-used queries which are very convenient to execute simply by moving the cursor over the query and hitting Ctrl-c twice.

You also retain a history of these queries by virtue of them existing in a plain file, as opposed to ephemeral shell history.

This might be a great tool, but the demo is horrible. The gif slowly builds up to something interesting, showing the setup of the tool. But then when it gets to showing the output, the gif resets back to the beginning. What does the tools actually provide?

Instead of a gif, please just paste that output into code fences in the README file.

While working on other projects, I found myself always having to connect and use SELECT * to see dummy entries or new users. I favored the CLI for monitoring my database entries, especially because I was testing and just adding dummy users + our first normal users in projects. So it became a bit tiring always having to connect to postgres, mysql and give select * queries from the CLI.

Cool tool, are you planning to support also other kind of DBs that are NoSQL such as MongoDB or Redis? That would be really interesting too.

Cool approach!

This tool appeals to me as someone who is already familiar to pgcli, psql, mysql, etc. Typing every time SELECT * FROM… annoys me, too.

I’d prefer to already evaluate the tool in the first or second paragraph. If you could move the readme section with the most eye opening and time saving commands right after the video, that would be great.

Thanks for making and sharing this tool.

This seems really cool! Looking forward to any updates on it.

How does this compare to Harlequin?