Hi all, I’m one of the creators of ChartDB.
ChartDB to simplify database design and visualization, providing a powerful, intuitive tool that’s fully open-source. This database diagram tool is similar to traditional ones you can find: dbeaver, dbdiagram, drawsql, etc.
https://github.com/chartdb/chartdb
Key Features:
- Instant schema import with just one query.
- AI-powered export to generate DDL scripts for easy database migration.
- Supports multiple database types: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Mssql, ClickHouse and more.
- Customizable ER diagrams to visualize your database structure.
- Fully open-source and easy to self-host.
Tech Stack:
- React + TypeScript
- Vite
- ReactFlow
- Shadcn-ui
- Dexie.js
So my first impression is that the requirement to copy-paste that elaborate SQL to get the schema is clever but not sufficiently intuitive. Rather than saying “Run this query and paste the output”, you say “Run this script in your database” and print out a bunch of text that is not a query at all but a one-liner Bash script that relies on the existence of
pbcopy– something that (a) doesn’t exist on many default installs (b) is a red flag for something that’s meant to be self-hosted (why am I talking to a pasteboard?), and (c) is totally unnecessary anyway.Instead, you could just say: “Run this query and paste the result in this box” and print out the raw SQL only. Leave it up to the user to figure out how they want to run it.
Alternatively you can also do something like: “Run this on your machine and copy/paste the output”:
$ curl 'https://app.chartdb.io/superquery.sql' | psql --user USERNAME --host HOSTNAME DBNAMEIn the case of the cloud service, it’s also not clear if the data is being stored on the server or client side in
LocalStorage. I would think that the latter would be preferable.Thanks for the thoughtful feedback, Daniel! You bring up a great point about the complexity of the current approach with the SQL script and the reliance on pbcopy. We’ll definitely consider simplifying it by providing just the raw SQL query, so users can run it in whatever way works best for them. As for the cloud version, we’re leaning towards using LocalStorage for data storage on the client side to keep everything local to the user’s machine, ensuring privacy and control. We’ll make this clearer in the UI and documentation. Appreciate the suggestions - they’re super helpful as we continue refining ChartDB!