I decided to try out docodb, an open source alternative to airtable, without ever having tried airtable, only having read about it.

The context is my work at Greenvibe, where I have a postgresql database containing measurements from our sensors and tables describing the clients.

It seems it will be less attuned to looking at the data (measurements) but I am going to find out.

What I will test:

• how easy it is to install. I will document the steps from the source.
• how do I execute fragments of SQL and see the results as spreadsheets.
• Can it be reversible - is a view / query automatically editable (i.e. does nocodb internally track the originating table and row and allow edits)
• can edits be prevented?
• can I export to csv / excel?

Installation:

• ddg nocodb leads to www.nocodb.com (I actually started from news.ycombinator.com)
• there is a 1 click deploy to heroku, which I skip since I have no such account or knowledge.
• next is the npx install: '''npx create-nocodb-app'''
  • cd ~/src
  • mkdir nocodb-test
  • cd nocodb-test
  • npx create-nocodb-app warns me it will install create-nocodb-app I say yes use pg / localhost / 5432 / alon / alon (host + port defaults) use a node.js project (docker the second option) taking a long time (doing this at seven stones gathering next to karmiel using a crappy 4g connection) failed with "express not found", looking up I saw the real error was a bad network connection I got a directory in the interim, "numerous_peacock" cd to it, run npm install I have "execsnoop" running in the background; It seems "npm install" does not do exec's.

npm install then node index.js

go to dashboard.

I get what I can only describe as an advertisement for itself: a revolution! supports everything! then I am asked to enter an email and password... this is not local :( trying a little strace to see if I can quickly find the sqlite local user db, but I cannot. giving up for now. grepping for 'Super Admin' string too, seeing a nc-lib-gui that contains it but it is minified, not readable. Too much work. How did this get so much love from yc?