Selfhosted

59923 readers

466 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam.
Posts here are to be centered around self-hosting. Please ensure it is clear in your post how it relates to self-hosting.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or git here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title.
No trolling.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

curbstickle@anarchist.nexus

curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world

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

submitted 2 months ago by Buck@jlai.lu to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] PerplexedBrick@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What you wrote about search looks exactly like common SQL queries in relational database, also you mentioned that you are not alone working with this data so you'll need to provide an access to that data to control who can do what.

If you have any even completely inexperienced or aspiring developer inside your team they would be able to do something just fine, not fast though.

I'm not sure how do you intend to use it precisely but you can also just create database and learn basics of SQL and I mean really basic stuff to just be able to join few tables.

And then it's not clear where you current data is persisted.

For more complex scenarios you'll probably need actual development.

And one more thing, there is this thingy called excel. It can connect to datasources such as postgres, with a bit of tweaking and vlookup you can create really complex and detailed spreadsheets

[–] Buck@jlai.lu 1 points 2 months ago

I know SQL and I can pull some faraway memories of PHP to create a web interface (or Python, but I’ve only ever used it for data analysis)

But it’s a far cry between using something off the shelf and developing something from scratch, especially when on company time when it’s not supposed to be your job (and you’ll be told to use the shitty existing tools instead of taking the time necessary to create something custom).

As for Excel, sure it’s an option, but there’s also data conflicts and overwritten version and all those pesky things.