
Ask HN: Kibana like data explorer UI for PostgreSQL? - reacharavindh
I am exploring an idea of using Postgres + Timescale for storing very small volume of log data and having a &quot;search based&quot; web UI like Kibana&#x27;s to let me and other users explore the log data.<p>Anyone here hacked around with such idea? have any open source projects to recommend?<p>Notes:
ELK will work, but it is an overkill for my needs, plus, I want to build this for fun with PostgreSQL.<p>I&#x27;m not good at Javascript and UI development in general (systems background), and would prefer to hack around some existing project rather than building something from scratch.
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brett-za
Maybe something like Metabase ([https://metabase.com/](https://metabase.com/))
would work for you?

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reacharavindh
Thanks the suggestion. I played with Metabase a bit today. It is great for
custom dashboards, searchable query links etc. but, I could not find a
interface element that would let me "full text search" a column in Postgres
table..

Do you have ideas?

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vajrapani666
You can use custom queries in metabase and parameterize them, for any
parameter you can expose the parameter with a text field available when you
embed the "question" anywhere.

[https://hevodata.com/blog/postgresql-full-text-search-
setup/](https://hevodata.com/blog/postgresql-full-text-search-setup/)

~~~
reacharavindh
The link was very helpful to learn about making use of FTS in Postgres.
Thanks!

I still could not figure out how to expose a filter as a user modifiable
dynamic search box/text field with Metabase. I could not find such a facility
in their documentation, nor in their forums. I'm giving up on Metabase for
this need.

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ahoka
You can try Grafana:
[http://docs.grafana.org/features/datasources/postgres/](http://docs.grafana.org/features/datasources/postgres/)

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reacharavindh
I'm looking for a search interface for searching through logs. Is there any
way to achieve such an interface with Grafana?

I could only see a query that results in a table view. But, I want to be able
to enter the search term dynamically.

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jfkw
Grafana recently announced Loki: [https://grafana.com/blog/2018/12/12/loki-
prometheus-inspired...](https://grafana.com/blog/2018/12/12/loki-prometheus-
inspired-open-source-logging-for-cloud-natives/)

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dewey
[https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest](https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest)
and a very simple ui with an input field and an output list?

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sosedoff
If you need a lightweight web UI for Postgres - have a look at
[https://sosedoff.github.io/pgweb/](https://sosedoff.github.io/pgweb/)

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reacharavindh
Thanks for this recommendation. I'm using pgweb as a general purpose SQL web
interface to Postgres. But, I cannot easily adapt pgweb to bring out a search
interface that only searches a certain column of table in postgres.

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sosedoff
Not sure what kind of issues you're having with search, but it's pretty
straightforward to browse table data with a filter on a single column (be it
numerical or text data). Im the author - shoot me an email (in profile) if you
have any questions.

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LogicX
We use [http://redash.io](http://redash.io) to look at our timescale data.
Works our quite well for charting, and searching... they let you put variables
into your sql query, then they become input fields, making search easy.

~~~
reacharavindh
I think this is exactly what I was looking for. I'm out now trying to figure
out how to get redash running on my Mac to see if it is what I want.

:-( Sadly, their documentation shows how to quickly setup redash on AWS, GCP,
and Docker. But, no instruction about some guy just trying to get it running
on a Mac without Docker.

[https://redash.io/help/open-source/setup](https://redash.io/help/open-
source/setup)

I will figure it out eventually, I think.

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arikfr
We’re a small team and have to prioritize. At some point maintaining the Mac
setup was too much, and Docker covers most use cases.

But setup for Postgres should be relatively simple as the extra dependencies
required are minimal.

If you want you’re welcome to post a question on our forum (discuss.redash.io)
and I’ll follow up with pointers on how to set it up on your Mac.

Update: just noticed that our developer setup guide without Docker is still
online: [https://redash.io/help/open-source/dev-
guide/setup](https://redash.io/help/open-source/dev-guide/setup).

~~~
reacharavindh
Thanks for the link to dev-guide. I missed it because I was looking for
instructions for standalone installation and skipped "developer guide"
thinking it might be about dev docs about source code org and stuff.

Sorry if my response sounded like a snarky comment or a rant. That was not my
intention. I can only thank you for an open source project and do not feel
entitled for anything.

I ended up using Docker compose to get started with redash on my Mac. But, I
cringe on the inside every time I am forced to use Docker (a daemon with
higher privileges) to run stuff from the Internet, and it runs Postgres,
Redis, a linux kernel, and so much more for essentially running a Flask
application.

Now that I know redash fits my needs, I will spend the time needed to read the
docker compose file and trace those steps and assemble the pieces necessary to
run redash directly on my Linux server without Docker.

Thanks for redash!

~~~
arikfr
> Sorry if my response sounded like a snarky comment or a rant.

Actually it didn't. All good :)

> Now that I know redash fits my needs, I will spend the time needed to read
> the docker compose file and trace those steps and assemble the pieces
> necessary to run redash directly on my Linux server without Docker.

Glad to hear it fits! Note that if all you need is Postgres support, don't
bother with installing requirements_all_ds.txt and you can skip some of the
system packages we install.

Maybe this forum thread will be helpful: [https://discuss.redash.io/t/bring-
back-bootstrap-sh/2436/12](https://discuss.redash.io/t/bring-back-bootstrap-
sh/2436/12).

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seektable
Try our free BI tool [https://www.seektable.com](https://www.seektable.com) It
has PostgreSql connector; with 'flat table' report type you can easily
filter/sort records without need to write SQL, and pivot tables/charts are
good for summary reports (under the hood GROUP BY queries are generated)

BTW, SeekTable can connect to ElasticSearch so it may be used with this data
source too.

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reacharavindh
Thanks for the suggestion. But, I'm looking for an open source tool that I can
tinker with, contribute to and modify to my needs if needed now or in the
future.

Seektable looks cool for enterprises that wants a hands-off reporting tool.
Good luck!

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jason_slack
I’m using timescale with 400gb of data. I don’t use web tools but let me throw
out DBeaver if you need a solid database management tool:
[https://dbeaver.io](https://dbeaver.io)

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reacharavindh
Just curious. What do you do with your 400GB of TS data on Timescale? As in
how do you query it? Are they only metrics or do you have textual data in
there as well?

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jason_slack
I bring in stock data. I query it. I make tables to store models for future
reference or historical purposes. I have tables for order tracking, metrics,
statistics, etc. it’s all automated.

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cjlm
[https://www.github.com/rickbergfalk/sqlpad](https://www.github.com/rickbergfalk/sqlpad)
might be worth a look.

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pytyper2
Is there a SQL server management studio like application for postgres?

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123repeater
I like datagrip

