Ultorg: A User Interface for Relational Data

https://www.ultorg.com

by veltas • 3 years ago

129 44 3 years ago

ultorg.com

veltas• 3 years ago

Previous discussions I've found:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 May 2022

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 Dec 2021

dang• 3 years ago

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Ultorg: A user interface for relational databases [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31219324 - April 2022 (67 comments)

Ultorg: A General-Purpose User Interface for Relational Databases (2020) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29647880 - Dec 2021 (13 comments)

_boffin_4• 3 years ago

I love this, but am not going to pay a subscription for this. $420 a year? That’s more than IntelliJ Ultimate! Doesn’t even come with a fallback license that I can use when I stop subscribing.

alad_• 3 years ago

It would be nice to have a free tier, even if it limited the amount of time that I could use it per day. 1h/day seems enough for a hobbyist to incorporate this tool into their workflow.

eternityforest• 3 years ago

I'm very curious what a hobbyist could use this for!

I've noticed that SQLite itself seems to already have all the functionality needed for an AirTable clone besides the UI, everything needed to generate a pretty decent end user forms interface is basically already in a database schema. sqlite-web is really close, just missing foreign key browsing.

eirikbakke8• 3 years ago

Founder here. I launched Ultorg a few days ago, so I still haven't quite figured out if there ought to be a free or reduced-functionality tier yet.

There was a big "The fallacy of freemium in SaaS" post from another founder a few weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37832809), which inspired me to try with "free trial then paid-tier-only" for the initial launch. But I might change it later.

For now, I've set a rather long free trial period (21 days).

anon84873628• 3 years ago

Anyone have comparison with Sigma or other spreadsheet oriented BI / analytics tools?

eirikbakke8• 3 years ago

Ultorg founder here.

Traditional BI tools work like an Excel pivot table: Put some fields on the X axis, some fields on the Y axis, and get an aggregation or visualization in the middle. The input is always a single table (or, if you have multiple tables, a flat join across all of them).

Ultorg is better at working with databases that have multiple tables in them, across arbitrary one-to-many relationships (not just warehouse-style star schemas), and where you want to look at actual raw data rather than colorful aggregations. There are specialized automatic table styles that visualize e.g. how one table relates to others through nested or parallel joins. The data displays you see in Ultorg are also editable--you can commit changes back to the database if desired.

Scarbutt• 3 years ago

Is it possible to generate new tables within Ultorg? Specifically, for the purpose of experimenting with a novel schema using test data.

kgodey2• 3 years ago

Congrats on launching, Eirik!

eirikbakke8• 3 years ago

A friend on Hackernews! Thanks!! Kriti also has a wonderful project in this space, which is non-commercial and organized as a 501(c)(3): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34999774

kgodey2• 3 years ago

You're welcome! I'm very glad to see Ultorg both generally available and on the HN front page, you've built such a cool interface.

canistel• 3 years ago

Refreshing to see a desktop application with native widgets (unless I am wrong). Wonder what GUI toolkit is used?

bradrn• 3 years ago

From the images I’m guessing Qt, so not truly native.

eirikbakke8• 3 years ago

It's Swing--same as IntelliJ.

edlinfan2• 3 years ago

Eirik, in case you're still watching this thread:

I would pay you $400 for this tool without hesitation. I would also pay for upgrades. However, the $400/yr subscription model is a deal killer. This is fine if you're targeting business users only, but it puts the tool out of reach for all but the most determined individuals.

You might want to consider the pricing model used for many digital audio workstations -- a perpetual license for a few hundred dollars, with free patches until the next major version. Then the next major version also costs a few hundred dollars. Rinse and repeat.

This gives you a solid income stream, without ripping your software out of the hands of a customer the instant they're short on cash. It also means the program could work without an internet connection or other constant DRM/activation nonsense. This will likely matter for the technical audience you're targeting.

Best of luck!

replwoacause• 3 years ago

I feel this way too. I was excited, as a beta user, to see this go GA but then I saw the pricing and was forced to move on. Pretty steep indeed. But he has a great piece of software here. Best of luck Eirik!

eirikbakke8• 3 years ago

Thank you for your thoughtful comment!

I always thought of relational databases as a tool for businesses; normally we don't need them as individuals--except perhaps when planning a wedding! Thus the pricing is targeted for businesses and people who get reimbursed by their employers. A second group might be contractors who purchase their own tools.

There might be ways to make a separate tier for private or occasional use, though. And recurring vs. perpetual might be a separate question from the actual total expected cost.

AlotOfReading• 3 years ago

It's a very different conversation when an engineer goes to their manager and says "I think this tool I tried out at home could improve our work" versus "we should buy everyone licenses for this tool that I've never used".

edlinfan2• 3 years ago

Should you be interested in doing so, my suggestion would be to offer an "offline" version. It could be feature-limited as follows:

1. Do not include the planned online collaboration features.

2. Support only Excel, Access, CSV/TSV, and Sqlite data sources.

Charge a fair one-time license fee for this, and you would create an attractive tier for individual power-users, without cannibalizing subscription sales of the "online version" for businesses and contractors who care about collaboration and interacting with large production databases.

Just my $0.02.

RachelF• 3 years ago

Looks nice, but the pricing is steep, and the subscription model has drawbacks as other commenters have mentioned.

Perhaps consider a limited free version, say 1000 rows and 10 tables as a limit.

The positive side of this is that it will put it in the hands of many people, most of whom wouldn't have bought it anyway. This lets you get more feedback and find more bugs. A fraction of them will like it and tell their boss to buy the paid version. Do not provide support to free users, it will eat your time.

_s_a_m_• 3 years ago

These subscription models are straight up scam if a webservice is not essential for its working and also then it must be resonably priced. I pay for MS Office + OneDrive probably 7€/month. So how does this shit add up?

zupa-hu• 3 years ago

His tool, his pricing, take it or leave it. Nothing scammy in it.

Build something better, undercut his price, then we can talk.

XCSme• 3 years ago

I am trying a similar pricing model for my product.

Something like $399 perpetual license + 1 year free updates/support, and then optional around $99/year. Being self-hosted, you can always keep using it, but to make the company sustainable, it's not wise to promise free lifetime updates.

Would this model too work for you?

devmor4• 3 years ago

Echoing the sentiment of other users here - I would happily pay a steep up front price for this software. I will not pay a monthly subscription for software that runs on my machines using data on my machines.

Please reconsider the rent-seeking price model, or at least move it somewhere appropriate like an enterprise support tier.

d1sxeyes3• 3 years ago

I don't think this is particularly rent-seeking, just you and the creator have a difference of opinion on the value of the software.

devmor4• 3 years ago

Again, the value is not the issue. Perpetual payment is. My post was very clear.

wg0• 3 years ago

Great tool. Nice. Something you want to have.

But.

I'm not a product, market or pricing expert but even I can tell that this is a very very steep (and recurring per user) price especially in 2023 where businesses and individuals alike are tracking and scrutinizing every single dime spent or to be spent.

No kidding but big companies won't mind putting more engineering hours to build their internal data dashboards which would be almost a one time Investment and minor tweaks here and there afterwards whereas most already would have.

Individuals and hobbyists can't do that but most can't afford this either.

Which leaves to pretty much financial industry (PEs, Wall Street folks and such) that have to juggle Excel sheet Attachments from multiple parties and such.

Maybe they or some of them find value at this price point. But I'm not so sure of that either.

EDIT: Typos

dhash• 3 years ago

I’ve been using ultorg for a couple years now, very happy to see it reach broader audiences

Its’s a game changer tool for me, providing an intuitive graphical query construction interface (via a simple stacked table header, very sum-product like) and cross-db joins. The multi-column report style layouting is also really useful for looking at wide queries with lots of data. I’ve shamelessly ripped of some of eirik’s ideas and wowed people from (especially) the financial world

IMO its one of the truest advancements in SQL clients that i’ve seen in a while.

throwaway290• 3 years ago

How does generating queries work with other sources like CSV?

hahn-kev• 3 years ago

Good question, if I were to do it I'd just import into an in memory SQLite db and let you query that

jawngee• 3 years ago

This is pretty cool, a little clumsy though.

The $35/mo pricing seems off to me. DataGrip is $9 a month and feels more capable - though I only spent a couple of hours with ultorg but I didn't see any benefit worth paying 3x for. Again though, only a couple of hours of use. I also don't know why I'd be paying more for a tool than I am for the database service its connecting to.

darkteflon• 3 years ago

One more vote for a one-off license or subscription tier aimed a solo developers and hobbyists - I would pay for this in a heartbeat and it appears I’m not alone!

Ultorg: A User Interface for Relational Data

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