Reltron: a GUI for exploring relational databases(kevinlynagh.com) |
Reltron: a GUI for exploring relational databases(kevinlynagh.com) |
While I am a fast SQL writer, having to munge and navigate the multiple relation tables during our fast-paced discussion was a little unwieldy. A tool like this to quickly jump between joins and look at the result sets while in the midst of a technical discussion as it evolves would have been perfect.
The coding space is big, permitting lots of invalid state -- most of the programs you could write are not just wrong but gibberish. Using a GUI like this reduces the problem space enormously; the comparison feels akin to the one between grabbing a live fish and connecting Lego blocks.
It would be more useful if it weren't an OSX-only closed source demo.
I think it's far more useful than you seem to, though. Reducing the problem space is huge. It's why macro programming (ala Lisp) is so dangerous. It's why I left Haskell for Python, and why I often wish I was using Idris[1], which pretty much reads your mind and writes what you meant. It's true of coding generally, but SQL programming especially, that there's a conceptually obvious, small space of reasonable programs, but because we're writing in text, we're free to roam over an enormous superspace of (occasionally) wrong or (usually) meaningless programs.
Not sure exactly what you mean by wrong or meaningless programs. (edit3) I'm not sure it's possible to write a meaningless SQL statement.
Edit: it seems like the authors don't see it as that useful. I think the page said they are still looking for use-cases, or something. Have you contacted them?
Edit2 (fta): "However, as of Jan 2019 we’re tabling the project until we have a concrete, motivating use case to inform further development."