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AFFORDABLE selfhosted nocode relational databases? (à la Baserow/NocoDB, etc.) (jlai.lu)

submitted 4 months ago by Buck@jlai.lu to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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Hi,

I selfhost a lot of tools for personal (and professional) use, so this surprised me, but maybe I am missing something regarding simple tools that are "open source enough" for relational databases.

My (small, broke) company has a problem with tools, and I figured that open source would be the answer, but if I look at the usual suspects that would allow for a simple way to create/update/sort/search clients and missions, that everyone could use, everything seems either very limited or very expensive (or both!).

I looked at the pricing for Baserow, Grist, NodoDB, Nocobase, and for 100 users and 5000 rows, it means around 12 000 euros per year to get something usable. And the open source selfhosted versions are quite limited everytime. I saw someone rage about open core some months ago, but never realized how true this was.

The only thing that seems truly open source (and a lot more limited than the others) is Mathesar. Maybe it will be good enough. There isn't much content about it, I will have to look at the documentation to get a better feeling of what it can offer.

Is there some truly open source no code relational database tools around? Enough to create rows, have advanced (AND OR) search, and a tag system to look for "all clients in country X with type of mission Y in sector Z in 2024" or "all missions for clients A or B"

For those wondering, of course we have a tool to manage missions, clients, billing, etc. but it is truly awful, and I was hoping to propose something simple to manage search of past references, but nothing seems as easy as I thought it would.

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[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like you might just be better off using an SQL database and writing a simple frontend yourself.

[–] Buck@jlai.lu 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, especially for advanced search, everything else is quite basic, indeed.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 months ago

On the plus side that means it'll be pretty quick and easy to implement.

But as always, I'm sure they'll ask "ok but can it also do this?" and at that point you need to weigh the cost of your time vs buying one of those products.

The only other options I'm aware of are just using something like phpmysql or whatever the postgres equivalent is called, or maybe some FOSS alternative to powerbi. Maybe libreoffice calc can connect to SQL?

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 points 4 months ago

That's the way it goes with the scale from simple to "something that fits our needs". Either something is too simple or it is so complex that you can't let your more challenged users at it. So you end up rolling your own solution.

That's how many companies end up with monstrous Excel or Access applications.

The upside of having your own app that uses common open source components is that integration with other tools is easier later down the line. Make it web based and it can run on basically every computer on the planet. Use PostgreSQL or MySQL in the backend and you can easily add other frontends if needed.