Thank you so much for taking the time to look and provide this superb feedback. I'll work through it and I'll see what I can do! You have no idea how much it means to me to get my first feedback from beyond my direct contacts.
Do you have any thoughts on whether you would have a use for it in any of your work? Is there a particular feature that's missing that is a showstopper for you? Or is there some other reason you wouldn't use it?
The use-cases for such a tool, as you mentioned on the website, is when the user doesn't want to get involved with a querying language like SQL. I somehow disagree with the premise that writing SQL is "tedious and low value", specifically for a generalist software engineer. So although I'm not an ideal user for your product, but I could imagine a whole category of users who might need to find data in an instance of SQL Server (or any other RDBMS). Putting myself in their position, what I would like to have in such a tool is:
– not only use the full power of browser (tabs, etc.), but also benefit from code which runs on client-side and improves the interactivity of the tool; i.e. more JavaScript to allow users to dig and drill deeper into the data without leaving the page or even the browser tab. The foreign key reference is a good example for that.
– export the data I'm looking at for further processing and filtering in an spreadsheet; integration with in-browser spreadsheet tools such as Google Sheets would also be nice.
– improved UX; e.g. I know that the links in "referenced by" column of `Customer` table should point the address, etc., but the presence of the link doesn't necessary mean that there is a recorded address for a customer. The user shouldn't have to click on the link and open a new tab just to find out that there is no address for a customer.
- allow the user to save their customized views of tables or joins and come back to them easily; e.g. she is the head of customer support for your company and doesn't want to see `PasswordHash` and `PasswordSalt` for the customers. All she needs to know is a view into this table with customers' contact information or in more advanced use-cases, number of orders in the past year for each customer in a separate column.
- more advanced users might like to be able to pass SQL through your tool and get the results as the table format offered.
That's very useful! Thanks again for your generosity with your time.
I'll change the text about tedious SQL to something else, you make a good point. What I had in mind is where someone without access to the db has to ask a dev or dba to run a 'select * from xx' for them. Most SQL work certainly has great value and is far from dull!
Do you have any thoughts on whether you would have a use for it in any of your work? Is there a particular feature that's missing that is a showstopper for you? Or is there some other reason you wouldn't use it?
Thanks again!