[ddj] GUI database tools for newsrooms

Tue May 26 04:19:53 UTC 2015

I'd be cautious about MongoDB. It's NoSQL and doesn't handle nested data
very well. It's easy to use if you are only doing things with document
format but it's not really a SQL tool.

I think the problem is the GUI part. There are loads of hosted solutions
for DBs but most don't have GUIs that would allow Excel users to work with
data. That's why I see a lot of people using Google Sheets - because it's
an Excel flavor but does synch across users and has versioning that can
easily be rolled back, as well as roles.

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 2:18 AM, Michael Saunby <mike at saunby.net> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Alex Salkever
Growth/BD/Data Journalism
415-503-9035
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