Show HN: TextQuery – Query CSV, JSON, XLSX Files with SQL
69 comments
·May 5, 2025bdcravens
mritchie712
this is a tarpit idea I've fallen into multiple times. It's really hard to make money from a desktop SQL client, let alone now that DuckDB has a good, free UI.
Exuma
As OSX user... if there is a nice pristine OSX app (like Postico) I will pay for it even if theres a free version (easily, hands down) if the UI/UX is nice, and pro version has extra features. So I'm definitely someone who would pay.
ByteAtATime
Have you seen duckdb? https://duckdb.org/
It's basically what you're building, but more low-level. Really cool, to be honest -- serves the same market too. Do you have any significant differentiator, other than charts?
shubhamjain
TextQuery actually uses DuckDB under the hood :) DuckDB is no doubt an excellent piece of software already. The differentiator is that GUI client is just a good lever to make many things easier.
In context of TextQuery: you can use tabs you can work on multiple queries. With Table editor you can edit multiple field values at once. During import, you can have better control over what the final table would look like (select/deselect columns, define data/time format etc.)
Again, it's a personal preference. Some people swear by psql, and some can't live without TablePlus/Postico.
freilanzer
They're also developing a gui: https://duckdb.org/2025/03/12/duckdb-ui.html
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somerandom2407
You might have a wider audience if you put in on the app store. I only install very well-known software outside of the app store. For anything more niche, I need it to be on the app store to offer some assurance that it is not malicious and that sandboxing is enforced.
ayhanfuat
Congratulations. I do see value in quickly seeing, querying files in a nice desktop interface. I am curious why there is no parquet support though. If duckdb is running in the background it is probably easy to support it?
shubhamjain
I am planning to add it soon. It shouldn’t be hard. Just have to figure out the UI part.
dowager_dan99
parquet support would be pretty easy I think, but also way outside the target market user. These are the features that are really hard to avoid: easy, but not free, no benefit.
lowleveldesign
Coongrats on the release.
It reminds me of Log Parser Studio [1] on Windows. Using SQL to query text and log files is a great idea.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170710212920/http://gallery.te...
mutagen
This looks awesome. I'm the target audience. I do quite a bit of development around SQL Server and there's an endless stream of CSV and XLSX files coming and going that need spot checks and quick looks. I use ModernCSV quite a bit and would have purchased that if it built these SQL features in. I've used DuckDB directly a few times to join and query CSV and XLSX files, I'll pay my own $$ for something that quickly streamlines this.
I can import into SQL Server but there's too much ceremony needed (column types, etc) for quick looks at data I'm going to answer a question about and then discard. After a quick look at TextQuery I'm running into the same issues (although TextQuery is just a couple of clicks instead of 5+). I was also seeing an error yesterday from associating XLSX files with TextQuery but that seems to have gone away today.
dowager_dan99
I think I'm your target user, but I currently use DuckDB for this type of work, so unlikely to buy your product. That said, lots of devs pay for Rider and/or DataGrip - sometimes with their own money - so maybe there is a market here?
imachine1980_
A few hours ago this would have been useful, I will probably give it a try in few days. On another note, I recommend clarifying in the heroes page that it's about a one-time purchase, because that's a really big plus.
jamroom
Quick question - is it possible to import multiple files at once? I frequently get ZIP files full of csv/xlsx files that I need to search through. I didn't see a way to import more than 1 file at a time. Thanks!
ok_computer
You may want to try something similar to Python Polars scan_csv for lazy evaluation of same schema csv directories. It also supports a SQL context where you can use a subset of Ansi Sql instead of learning the functional api to start.
shubhamjain
Thanks for the feedback! It is something on my mind. Will think about the best way to implement it.
Gormo
Another tool in the same vein is 'q': https://harelba.github.io/q/
whoomp12342
oh man, I remebmer solving this problem by connecting these files into SQL SERVER and joining agains them. Those were the days
thisislife2
Still do something similar by using a simple python script to import such files into SQLite and then query the db with SQL. And, if I remember right, now there are free SQLite GUI db readers that also easily allow you to do this.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
This does seem pretty neat. Any plans to expand to include XML as well?
Congrats on launching, but this feels like an uphill climb to get paying customers. You need to find the intersection of potential customers that know SQL but don't want to use one of the open source options. (perhaps data analysts working in restricted environments where the only option is a web browser)