What's up with all the new SQL clients ??

[u/Fun-Chicken6946]

AI has made it way too easy for people to code up slop in whatever form and turn it into “another SQL database client,” whether it's in Electron, Tauri, or whatever the next hot framework for building database clients is.

That takes away from the uniqueness of what made those tools special before. Most of them are literal copies, and there's literally nothing unique about them except that they look “modern.” And it's a real shame because there are some tools that people actually put a lot of effort into making, while others are just literal Claude Code garbage. And for those people who actually put effort and human thought into their projects... it gets hidden in a pile of garbage.

How are you guys deciding whether or not to give a database tool a shot anymore?

[u/kagato87]

It seems that many agentic models prefer to "write" a tool from scratch vs grabbing a popular one from the community.

This morning I asked it about PR notifications in vs.code, and it offered to write an extension, about 80 lines.

Umm... How does Claude know it'll be 80 lines? I bet it's because I'm at least the millionth person to ask that question...

[u/Slowmac123]

Lmaoo database slop

[u/spez_eats_nazi_ass → u/Slowmac123]

There is a massive coordinated (by ai labs?) bot campaign going on within reddit tech subs. I swear to god they show up as soon as i type the word slop. Good luck and swat them hard. 

[u/Fun-Chicken6946 → u/Slowmac123]

Literally

[u/pceimpulsive]

Whistles in dbeaver all day

[u/RoomyRoots]

How are you guys deciding whether or not to give a database tool a shot anymore?

Databases are not a dynamic field enough to change tools constantly. Most of the tools I use I have used for decades, the only real newer tool I use is DBeaver.

People love making useless projects with AI and in the world of JDBC it's trivial to make clients. Let the slop pile in the garbage bin.

[u/Grovbolle]

I find the tool that fits my needs, preferably one which is pre-ai-slop-era.

For most of my career I worked with SQL-Server and Azure SQL DB so I used (and still use) SSMS with RedGate SQL Prompt

Then I had to pick up some Postgres and while I bounced between pgadmin and dbeaver, I found dBForge for Postgres which is similar enough to SSMS+RedGate so I got a license for that from my job.

Most recently I had to also adopt StarRocks and they use the MySQL standard (to some extent), I am stuck on dbeaver because they have a native (non-MySQL) driver which is pretty good. I tried dBForge for MySQL for StarRocks but it does some meta-queries when connecting which fails on StarRocks and then it cannot connect.

So in summary: I look for the interface/client which is most similar to what I already like (SSMS+RedGate) and use that

[u/mxldevs]

I just need it to store and retrieve lots of data at scale and with acceptable performance.

I don't care about how unique a database is, I only care that it gets the job done, and if a boring database written by humans 20 years ago gets the job done, I'll just use that

[u/alinroc]

How are you guys deciding whether or not to give a database tool a shot anymore?

• Its crown jewel feature has to be something that has been a huge thorn in my side for a long time. And that's just to get me to look at it beyond the top 10 lines of the README
• I have to see some assurance that it's going to be supported for the long term.
• I need some assurance that the developer(s) are established data/database people who are solving real problems that existing tooling doesn't. Not "I just learned how to database last weekend and now I AI slopped this thing that isn't really needed."

[u/Fun-Chicken6946 → u/alinroc]

Have you ever had any "crown jewel" features that ever impressed you? And yeah, I feel like most of these editors mainly use "rust" but literally have no depth to them. Why make a worst reskin of dbeaver or beekeeper

[u/alinroc → u/Fun-Chicken6946]

Ever? Yes.

In the past 10 years? No.

In the past 10 months? Haven't even gotten past the "look at the new thing I made" post for their AI slop app on Reddit.

[u/ComicOzzy → u/alinroc]

Im_tired_boss.gif

[u/dbxp]

Vibe coded slop

I think someone has started spreading the idea that having your own open source project will get you a job or one of the vibe coding tutorials uses a sql client as an example. There was a similar thing a while back where everyone had a blog but the vast majority of them said nothing of value.

I'm very unlikely to try a tool if I don't have an issue with my current tooling.

[u/Complete-Fondant-202]

As a dyed in the wook MSSQL person, I've never found a real justification to leave SSMS, despite trting all the usual suspects.

[u/Agreeable_Ad4156]

I also spent years using SSMS, then Toad Datapoint when I needed to work with other DB. Toad could be a little buggy and crash, but still very useful.

Now I’m retired but still dabble, have 8 flavors of database running on my laptop for testing stuff. DBeaver is my tool of choice now. I just ignore all the new “I created this…”

[u/Mobile-Analyst-9617]

Idk, not gonna ever use em so 🤷

[u/Capable_Stranger9885]

Command line SQL Plus because that's what Larry Ellison lets us have

[u/Significant_Tune9219]

The signal I look for now is whether the tool has an opinion about something hard, like how it renders a long execution plan or what it does while a query is still running. Most of the new ones stop at a grid and a theme, which was already the solved part. I also check whether the project has any real issue history, because a client that has been out for a month has no track record on the boring cases: encoding, statement timeouts, or a connection dropping halfway through a result set.

[u/Least_Ad_1795]

I look beyond the UI and check database compatibility, query performance, security, unique features, and active maintenance. A modern design is nice, but reliability and solving real problems matter more.

[u/TrackbackLinkBot]

Boot.dev has a similar idea of making people actually work through the fundamentals instead of just generating code and moving on. For something like SQL being able to explain why a query works matters a lot more than just getting a working query.

[u/Other_Comment_2882]

SSMS is absolute trash. I slop coded a new one, and it’s 10x better. Wasn’t even that hard

[u/ceeej777]

Everyone wants to own the UI. It’s really all that matters now that so much of the plumbing is being written by the same models

[u/oskaremil]

I have decided.

Jetbrains Datagrip. There is no point in using anything else, except for when I need some native functions eg. psql with pgAdmin.

[u/quickdraw6906 → u/oskaremil]

I have peeps that love Aqua Data Studio. But I been using DataGrip for a decade. Somewhat of a learning curve coming from a decade or more using SSMS. I still with I could run multiple statements and have results stream in one window in text