Using a UI to explore data is like looking at the picture instead of someone describing the picture with words.
Yet the picture at the top of the article is incomprehensible to me. Why is the "session_speakers" table positioned there? It relates speakers and sessions and then has a geometric layout that completely fails to convey that.
You put too many bezier curves on a page on my eyes go cross. They don't even bother to make the lines different colors. Just a bunch of white curves against a fixed grid layout. Wut?
It's taking well structured data and then destructuring it into an inaccurate sloppy picture. I don't get it.
Isn't it a problem with many-to-many relationships in relational algebra? You have to have this artificial table to relate things in many-to-many way. How would you display it in a better way?
The tables should be better ordered. "speakers" is obviously the primary table here and should be top left. The "session_speakers" should be between it and the table it maps "sessions." Then "reviews" and "events" on the bottom. There's an obvious "top end" and "bottom end" of this structure that this graph completely gets wrong.
You could argue that "events" are primary in which case just switch the order of that and "speakers."
I'd color the table headers differently and different from each other and have the arrows leaving that box match the color of the box it's leaving. Also drop "public:". It's expected and default so it does not need to be displayed here.
Drop the key icon and just make the key fields in bold or with a different style.
Don't make me hunt around to match information and don't be afraid to use differential styling.
That's great feedback! Thank you! I wonder if we can auto-layout in the way you describe. Should be doable. We will look into it.
I know, what I was asking is if this is something professionals actually use.
Like, you can make websites graphically with DreamWeaver (or something), but I think most people say that you're better off using HTML and CSS and whatnot if you know how to use that.
Is this GUI stuff something people who are good at SQL actually use or is this mostly for new people?
I used to write a ton of SQL and I could write a query for anything you asked for, no matter how incompatible the schema was to your request.
My first step was to look at the data using the UI. Then when I tested my queries, I also just ran them in the UI.
It’s just faster.
I never used the UI for “simple” queries since there wasn’t anything to test.