[ddj] GUI database tools for newsrooms

Michael Saunby mike at saunby.net
Sat Apr 18 09:18:08 UTC 2015


How about using CartoDB?  It's an open source project, so you can host it
yourself - https://github.com/CartoDB/cartodb
but there's also free to use and enterprise services http://cartodb.com/

Files in Excel and many other formats can be imported easily.

Michael

On 17 April 2015 at 18:45, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb at znmeb.net> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 12:49 AM, Sam Leon <sam.leon at okfn.org> wrote:
> > I'm looking for a secure hosted database service ideally running
> Postgres in
> > the backend which could be queried and updated using SQL commands but
> also
> > had a graphical interface for users not familiar with SQL who can easily
> run
> > queries and export to CSV. It's for journalists I'm working with who have
> > various datasets currently in Excel which is a nightmare for simultaneous
> > work and is exceptionally brittle.
> >
> > I'm aware of the the PANDA project, wondered if anyone else had any
> > tooling/service tips?
> >
> > Sam
>
> Some combination of Excel, ODBC, PgAdmin3 and PostgreSQL is probably
> the easiest path out of chaos for you and your users.  A hosted
> PostgreSQL isn't going to be cheap, though - I'd start with free
> desktop installs to get the workflow stabilized.
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/
>
> If you do go the hosted route, you'll need to hire a strong PostgreSQL
> database administrator (DBA) to handle all the backup and security
> stuff. Don't make that a "side task" for someone or you'll either lose
> data or get hacked or both.
>
> The front ends are Excel and PgAdmin3. PgAdmin3 is a GUI tool for
> managing the database but it also has a visual query builder similar
> to the one in MS Access. Excel also has a query builder. ODBC is
> "middleware" that will present a uniform database language to any
> query tool.
>
> After you've got all that nailed down, it's just a small step to R,
> RStudio and the bright world of analysis and visualization described
> in the RStudio cheatsheets
> (http://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/). ;-)
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