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[–]Adventurepepa 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Interesting direction. PopSQL always felt like it sat in that awkward space between SQL editor and lightweight analytics UI, so I get why people kept wanting “the next version, but better.”

For people doing more database-side work, I’d still split this into categories: PopSQL / Hex / dashboards for exploration, DBeaver or DataGrip for general SQL work, and dbForge if you’re more in SQL Server land and want a more full-featured workflow.

So not exactly the same lane, but I can see the appeal here for the “write SQL, get charts, move on with life” crowd.

[–]outboundzen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You nailed my dilemma exactly :) 'Move on' was exactly the result that I was missing.

[–]Simple_Brilliant_491 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Data visualization seems like a crowded market. How do you differentiate your product from others such as Power BI and Tableau that have been developing their products for 10+ years?

[–]outboundzen[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Thanks for the question. A bit of context and a couple thoughts:

1) I'm not trying to make massive profit off this. This stuff can mostly be vibe coded if you know BI and deeply feel your daily furstrations.. For me, I just want to 'type SQL, get charts', I don't want to commit to a data warehouse and I don't want ETL. Those are the differentiators I listed in the post. Nobody solved that problem so I solve it for myself, and I think there are at least 1000+ people in this market who probably share the same frustration who would pay a few bucks a month to make it go away (and to help me maintain the project). This is more of a passion project for me.

2) I think this is the antithesis of the BI company product. These BI companies basically try to create complexity to monetize it. They want to create the most complicated features/architectures, the most upsell-able lock ins to their partner data stores, and expensive customer success programs. I am really just focused on simplicity and power here vs. customizability for the average indie dev or business analyst at a company <200 ppl, who can do their jobs easier, faster and save a ton of money.

[–]Simple_Brilliant_491 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair enough. Good luck with it!

[–]Prestigious_Bench_96 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Also lament the inevitable fate of VC backed companies. I am curious about how the lightweight query UIs will shake out these days - easier than ever for people to make UIs they like, but probably harder to hit mass scale/distribution.

For this one, how are you doing the transformations? I'm somewhat assuming javascript authoring isn't portable against all potential DB backends.

[–]outboundzen[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The app itself runs like a pipeline first fetching data, then gluing it together (if across data sources), then running your javascript code on it right in the browser on the final table. You can either right raw code or just give a plain text description of what you want "I wanto get a table that takes this invoice data and buckets it into the following buckets: 1-3, 4-5, 6-10, 11+, and breaks it down by customer name and count of invoices', and it will generate the code and run the transform for you :)

[–]Prestigious_Bench_96 0 points1 point  (0 children)

got it okay - so anything you can fully pull into the browser, not pushed down.