We're beta testing database clients!

Do you have a SQL database you’d like to query directly from your notebooks? We’re looking for beta testers to try our new database client feature!

We currently support PostgreSQL, MySQL, and BigQuery. We plan to expand to other SQL and non-SQL databases in the near future, such as Presto and Snowflake. If you have a specific datastore in mind, let us know.

If this sounds interesting, please email us at support@observablehq.com. We’ll enable databases for you and send you a link to the documentation for how to get started.

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Do you have some example notebooks which use this feature?

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The (currently unlisted) database client introduction page is the best example, but that’s using a mock version of the client since the feature is tied to private notebooks.

Do you want me to enable the feature for your account? Playing with it connected to the public RNAcentral PostgreSQL database is maybe a better hands-on introduction.

Edit: @jrus I went ahead and enabled the feature on your account. You should see a new tab on your settings page.

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I was mostly just curious.

But thanks. [No promises I will actually try this out any time soon; I have a bunch of other projects and 2 small kids to keep track of.]

@visnup I’d love to beta test the SQL connector.

I have a lot of reports in Mode Analytics. It’s OK, but inelegant. (the visualizations and notebook mode are separate and don’t talk to each other, the visualization grammar is not quite correct, etc)

The core of each of these reports is SQL.

I’d try rebuilding some of those reports in Observable to see if we can switch.

My account : https://observablehq.com/@dynasty / https://observablehq.com/@dcposch

Sounds like a good fit for your use case!

I’ve enabled them for your account and team. You should see a new Databases tab in your personal and team settings. Take a read through the introduction page too.

Let us know how it goes and if you need any help getting setup!

Folks, database connections are now publicly available to all Observable users and teams.

We’ve also released a new, self-hosted database proxy that you can use to connect your private notebooks to local databases, or databases on an internal network.

Enjoy!

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Argh! Thanks for telling us, @bgchen. The links should be fixed now.

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Respectfully hijacking this thread to share a short guide for SQLite databases:


It demonstrates how to require version 1.0 of sql.js and load an sqlite database file directly from imgur.com (encoded as PNG, without having to worry about CORS).

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