Mathesar – an intutive spreadsheet-like interface to Postgres data

How does this compare to retool? I've been using that to build UIs directly on top of Postgres, and it's been nice to be able to design the screens a little; eg inserting new rows linked to a currently selected row by primary key. Curious if you're targeting primarily a spreadsheet-like view, or if the interface can be customized. How does the spreadsheet view work across multiple linked table? Can you present the tabular info in non tabular ways (e.g. a row details or editor view)

I tried to propose this to our team, But the option that it installs some schemas was a blocker. I do like using this tool on local pgdump.

Your website says you're a non-profit. Do you have any monetization plans down the line, otherwise how are you planning to maintain funding?

How do you differentiate from, say, dbeaver, or any similar database management software? What's the main reason to get Mathesar instead of DBeaver?

Ah. Thermians, from the Klaatu Nebula. Or was it Dalmations?

Thank you! And yeah, I understand your gripe. The tagline is meant to convey the general idea of "editing data in a table UI without a lot of clicks or keystrokes" in the fewest number in words; it does sacrifice precision (although that's why it's "spreadsheet-like" and not just "spreadsheet"). Do you have any ideas for language we could use instead?

Yes, you can try Visual DB: https://visualdb.com

Yep, Mathesar is GPLv3, not AGPL, so there’s no issue running it alongside proprietary services. Companies can absolutely use Mathesar as a standalone service in their stack without open-sourcing their other components. Another example of this is WordPress, which is also GPL, and has a thriving hosting ecosystem.

GPLv3 only applies if you modify and distribute Mathesar itself, it doesn’t extend to services that simply interact with it. If a company makes changes to Mathesar and distributes that modified version, then those modifications would need to be open-sourced under GPLv3. But using Mathesar as a microservice in an enterprise stack? No problem.

We’d love to see companies upstream fixes and improvements, of course!

This is one of the things we're actively considering working on soon! It's mentioned in the "What's next?" section of our beta release announcement: https://mathesar.org/blog/2025/01/29/release-0-2-0

Thanks! We do not have a SQL editor in the UI yet, but it's one of the things we're actively considering working on soon, it's mentioned in the "What's next?" section of our beta release announcement: https://mathesar.org/blog/2025/01/29/release-0-2-0

I'm not sure if this would fit your use case, but you can also use a separate SQL editor alongside Mathesar, we always reflect the latest state of your DB.

Mathesar doesn’t cache any database state, it always reflects the live structure of the database. If you run migrations through SQLAlchemy or Django, Mathesar will just show the database as it is before and after the migration, no extra steps needed.

You can also modify the data model directly in Mathesar, but if you’re using an ORM-managed database, you’ll need to update the ORM layer yourself to reflect any schema changes. If your ORM expects strict control over the schema, it’s a good idea to configure our permissions to prevent users from making data model changes in Mathesar's UI. Otherwise, it should coexist just fine.

Never give up, never surrender!

At least it's not an electron app.

Every single time I see an electron app, I wish there was a way to deelectronify it and just run it as a server.

Mainly I am bitter because I run an openbsd desktop and would have a pretty good chance at getting it to run if it were a normal web app. cross platform my elbow.

There is a docker image at least. Would be cool as a standalone tool though, I kind of agree.