JackDB Heroku Plugin - Explore Your Databases In Your Browser

https://github.com/jackdb/jackdb-heroku-plugin

by sehrope • 13 years ago

36 19 13 years ago

sehrope7• 13 years ago

Hi founder here - Hopefully the github page does a decent job explaining how it all works. If not, I can answer any questions you guys have.

programminggeek• 13 years ago

It took me a few clicks to figure out what JackDB is.

With all the new datastores out there, ending your project with DB seems to imply it's yet another database, then you go to your homepage and I have to click the about button to even figure out what the product might be.

Also, I kind of hate the tagline "make a lasting connection with your data". Given that your homepage only shows that and 2 buttons, it seems that you really want me to "make a lasting connection with my data" more than figure out what your product is. Why would someone even click the "Try JackDB Now" button if they don't know what it is or does?

http://www.jackdb.com/home.html is a much better page and maybe it should be your hope page. It certainly explains your product better.

On a side note, I'm not sure that there is a market willing to pay $12 or $29 a month for a web based database client, but I can see the basic appeal. Best of luck!

sehrope7• 13 years ago

Thanks. This is actually great feedback for us.

The distraction-free splash page is designed for first impressions. For return visitors, we make it easy to log in or try JackDB in a couple of clicks. We're always trying out new things with our design.

Our vision for JackDB is building a ubiquitous platform for working with data. Hence, "Make a lasting connection with your data."

zht• 13 years ago

so in other words, a prettier looking phpMyAdmin

sehrope7• 13 years ago

JackDB is about more than just database administration. There's nothing to install. And it's much more interactive.

abeh2• 13 years ago

this looks great. since i switched to postgres from mysql, i was missing something like sequel pro. i tried induction, but it is buggy. will be trying this out shortly!

ozataman2• 13 years ago

I've had good experience with Navicat.

abeh2• 13 years ago

thanks, will look at this too.

saro1• 13 years ago

Thanks. We're big fans of Mattt and the Heroku Postgres team.

Let us know what you think of JackDB!

skram2• 13 years ago

This is great. Any plans to support nosql datastores like couch and mongo? These datastores could really use an exploratory interface like JackDB.

sehrope7• 13 years ago

Thanks! Definitely. NoSQL support is coming soon, starting with MongoDB.

goldfeld• 13 years ago

I assume you didn't focus on MongoDB first because there's already MongoHQ. How does their admin interface compare to your open source project and to your paid solution?

ozataman2• 13 years ago

Believe it or not (given we live in the age of gmail and the cloud), the big issue for me is trust. How am I supposed to provide login information on mission critical databases, get the convenience of using a cloud-based product AND sleep well at night?

sehrope7• 13 years ago

This is a great question.

Of course, trust is an ongoing concern. Being upfront about how we handle security is a start. There's already a lot of trust in *aaS platforms, and we think JackDB is a great tool for building new data-driven projects in the cloud.

We also offer enterprise and private cloud deployments of JackDB.

I'll personally answer any security-related questions that people have.

benologist2• 13 years ago

This looks really nice but the plan structure is very weird.

Why do I need to know or care how many concurrent connections my querying or administration requires? Is this to stop people having more than one tab open? Why can't you just use connection pooling and probably not exceed more than 2 or 3 regardless?

The tiny limits on returned rows means many tasks are going to made tedious, simple stuff like pulling out every name/email subscribed to a mailing list is going to take multiple queries even on the pro plan.

sehrope7• 13 years ago

As we scale up JackDB, we'll be bumping up the usage limits and revising our pricing plans.

Connection pooling doesn't really make sense in this context because users can't share a database connection; if one is in the middle of a transaction, he could get clobbered by the other's work.

benologist2• 13 years ago

Connection pooling usually happens at the driver level, basically when you 'close' a connection it doesn't typically close it just gets flagged as ready to be re-used so the next query doesn't suffer the full overhead of establishing the connection.

Unless you're counting connections in some other way (or persisting them?) this means in the pro plan for instance I would need up to 20 literally-concurrent queries executing to actually use those connections at the same time which is really only applicable in a web-facing situation where you might have 10s or 100s or 1000s of concurrent users running queries.

From a technical stance an entire team of people accessing the database may fit within the '2' connections of the most basic plan just because there's not enough people to trigger high enough concurrency to require additional connections.

In an administration etc context it seems extremely unlikely unless I've got some long running queries which are also unlikely in a session/browser based service since the odds of closing before a query completes are too high.

It would make much more sense to charge directly based on the number of people actually administrating the database.

It would also be cool to see "plug your S3 credentials in" and have backups taken care of, this is something MongoHQ does and it's beautiful in its simplicity.

JackDB Heroku Plugin - Explore Your Databases In Your Browser

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