[sikan_]

Hi HN! I’m the lead engineer on Retool Database.

Spreadsheets are often used as “poor man’s databases”—they’re quick to get started, but fall apart when you need data integrity, validation, and the ability to query/filter data.

This is why I am so excited about this launch - Retool Database gives you the power of Postgres with the “getting started” speed of a spreadsheet. No setup required.

We've also spent a lot of time on the UI for interacting with the database as well. You can create and edit tables, columns, and rows quickly without writing SQL. You should be able to get the same speed of iteration as spreadsheets, but you are also starting from the get-go that can handle the increasing complexity of your data and scale much better with app development.

We’re giving you 5GB free storage for the first year + connection strings so you can access your data outside Retool.

Lots of learnings as we built this—happy to answer any question you have!

[CJefferson]

I just tried using this, and I'm afraid I don't think it's as easy as a spreadsheet. I don't even understand it!

I started things off, just kept clicking "yes, yes", made a database called "shopping", and now...

I just seem to have an empty page? There is 'id' and 'created_at'.

I can "Add row", which just let's me specify "id", which has to be a number.

There is a button marked "fields", which tells me my fields are "id" and "created_at", but doesn't seem to have any way to add new fields.

I then, at my last guess, tried doing "import CSV". It asks me to choose a field for each column. I don't have any fields yet. I want to make some. Why can't I pick "this should be a new field"?

Anyway, import CSV just tells me 'Syntax error at or near ")"' when I try running it. There are no close brackets in my CSV, so no idea where that is coming from.

[ithrow]

Can Retool Database be self-hosted stand-alone without Retool? I can see using this as a replacement for excel on some things.

[dmarble]

Check out:

NocoDB (https://github.com/nocodb/nocodb) - works w/ MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, SQLite, MariaDB

Baserow (https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow) - PostgreSQL based

APITable (https://github.com/apitable/apitable) - MySQL based

[sikan_]

We agree! The UI can be really helpful to make quick changes to schema, data, etc. You can’t run the UI without a Retool account though. We have a self-hosted Retool that works with your own Postgres database that you connect to Retool. Docs here: https://docs.retool.com/docs/retool-database-self-hosted

[winrid]

How do indexes work? Do you design them yourself or do they get automatically added based on some kind of heuristics?

[sikan_]

We don't do anything automatic like that (yet?), you will have to add indexes manually.

But I would have to say - modern day databases are so fast that you probably won't notice the performance of adding indexes until at least 100k+ rows in a table and/or you have very high read throughput on that particular table.

[zackwitten]

Looks awesome, great work Sikan and team!

[darkwizard42]

Way to go! Looks great.