
Postage – A fast replacement for pgAdmin - justintocci
https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues
======
skrebbel
Pretty off topic, but this appears to be made by a family that's also a
software company. Or the other way around. Awesome team page:
[https://www.workflowproducts.com/about.html](https://www.workflowproducts.com/about.html)

~~~
justintocci
That's us!

~~~
skrebbel
Really cool. Can you tell us more about how that happened? How does an entire
family somehow end up consisting of IT people and decide to start a software
company together? :-)

What's dinner conversation like? Do you have an office or does everybody live
and work in the same house and never leave except for groceries and bowling?

~~~
justintocci
I have nine children, homeschool them and they start programming around twelve
depending on interest.

I got fired because a new president wanted to hire his old it guy so my wife
started a company. That was ten years ago.

Lunch and dinner involve a lot of shop talk because when people get stuck it
helps to discuss. We all have different strengths so we get requests for a
'consult' when we take a break too.

We work in the livving room so phone calls can sometimes be funny. Kids being
kids and getting shushed.

We have all local clients at the moment and we find visiting them helps to
stir up work so we get out a bit.

~~~
cookiecaper
>I have nine children, homeschool them and they start programming around
twelve depending on interest.

That is awesome!

Have you written more about your experience somewhere online? I would love to
strive for something similar when my kids are a little older (my oldest is
currently 7) and I personally know several others who have similar hopes. Just
seeing a real implementation of this oft-discussed prospect is very exciting!
It's difficult to express the admiration I have for this.

Raising a large family is no small undertaking, to say nothing of mentoring a
guild of devs. Major heartfelt congratulations to you, your wife, and your
family of code wizards.

~~~
justintocci
I haven't written more online, sorry. Happy to chat though especially if you
have a parenting dilemma. You can reach me through our family website
tocci.xyz

We do have an idea for a YouTube channel where we film our attempts to fix up
our house. Any interest in that?

Thank you for your kind words.

------
jafingi
PGAdmin 4 is one of the worst software releases I have ever experienced.
Version 3 worked fine, but everything was destroyed with 4. So many things not
working, UI bugs, and you have to click multiple times to get to the same
point as you could in one click in 3.

~~~
skrause
Fortunately pgAdmin3 is not going anywhere for now because BigSQL maintains an
LTS release that stays compatible with the most recent Postgres versions:
[https://www.openscg.com/bigsql/pgadmin3/](https://www.openscg.com/bigsql/pgadmin3/)

So I simply continue to use pgAdmin3 until something better comes along
because I also really didn't like pgAdmin4.

~~~
justinclift
It seems like the BigSQL version of PgAdmin3 doesn't support SSL connections
to the server:

[https://bitbucket.org/openscg/pgadmin3-lts/issues/2/ssl-
mode...](https://bitbucket.org/openscg/pgadmin3-lts/issues/2/ssl-mode-not-
working)

Is that really the case? :(

~~~
doubleplusgood
Could work around it with stunnel until it's resolved

------
alexpetralia
Still highly recommend DBeaver for working with Postgres.

My own post on the topic: [http://alexpetralia.com/posts/2016/6/8/you-should-
be-using-d...](http://alexpetralia.com/posts/2016/6/8/you-should-be-using-
dbeaver)

~~~
carbocation
I started using it a few weeks ago since I didn't like any of the solutions on
Linux, and I came here to say that I've been delighted with DBeaver.

------
Posibyte
Is there a reason this was linked to the issues page rather than the repo
root?

By the way, this looks really nice. It's an electron app, but it references
having "a small fast C core library in the style of Node.js and NGINX." Can
you go into more detail about the architecture of this and how it's related to
Node and NGINX?

~~~
justintocci
Some info here:
[https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/blob/master/Fact...](https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/blob/master/Facts_About_Electron_Performance.md)

Postage is based on 'envelope' and works the same but the envelope repo has
more info about architecture:
[https://github.com/workflowproducts/envelope](https://github.com/workflowproducts/envelope)

------
pw
If you're on Mac, another great, albeit not free, Postgres admin app is
Postico ([https://eggerapps.at/postico/](https://eggerapps.at/postico/)).

~~~
justintocci
Funny experience. we tried to get into postgres.app not realizing they are
they same company as Postico. Rather than point out that they weren't
interested they just blasted us. Didn't find out till weeks later. Had a good
laugh.

Postico doesnt have autocomplete so i haven't tried it but i'm sure it's a
fine product.

~~~
jakobegger
I'm sorry if my response in January came across as harsh. I really do welcome
competition in the PostgreSQL client space -- that's why we have the web page
with all the Mac PostgreSQL clients [1] in the first place.

I didn't want to add Postage to that list because it didn't work with
Postgres.app when I tried it [2]. If Postage now works properly with
Postgres.app, feel free to open a new issue and I'll try it again.

[1]: [https://postgresapp.com/documentation/gui-
tools.html](https://postgresapp.com/documentation/gui-tools.html)

[2]:
[https://github.com/PostgresApp/PostgresApp/issues/365](https://github.com/PostgresApp/PostgresApp/issues/365)

~~~
_e
I have seen events like this occur with totally different projects on github
because issues feels like a message board. A different way of handling it
would be to open an issue in the Postage repo, put a link to the Postage issue
in the PostgresApp issue and then close the PostgresApp issue.

I like how the Toccis were very proactive and communicating how they were
working to resolve the issues but Jakob was right about how Github emails
everyone with each comment.

I'm glad it was resolved here on HN.

------
hendzen
You guys are offering free phone support? For a FOSS product. That is pretty
cool.

Also I would really recommend putting some of the screenshots on the Github
readme page.

See bottom -
[https://www.workflowproducts.com/postage.html](https://www.workflowproducts.com/postage.html)

~~~
justintocci
You're right. I've opened an issue for it:

[https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues/337](https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues/337)

It's time we spent a little time promoting Postage.

------
sandGorgon
Serious suggestion - do this :
[http://sidekiq.org/products/pro](http://sidekiq.org/products/pro)

Remember, it is very hard to donate...But very, very, very easy to pay for
invoices.

This is one of the coolest postgres apps, that actually works on Linux as
well. I would love to see this supported.

~~~
justintocci
The main reason we haven't done this is because we had hoped to get Postage
renamed PGAdmin5. Unfortunately, that outcome seems ever more unlikely. There
seems to be some political reason why the PGA4 team continues to get official
support while in ongoing trainwreck mode for a year now.

~~~
sorkin2
What kind of official support?

~~~
anarazel
As somebody spending a lot of time working on PostgreSQL I'd like to know the
same.

~~~
anarazel
justintocci left another comment, which he has since deleted, but since I've
spent some time investing in an answer, I'm posting it here. Justin, if you
dislike being quoted, let me know.

> In fact, it really should have had these tools a decade ago.

What does "should" mean here? That it'd have been good? Sure. That people
working (as a hobby, or as part of their employment) on PG should have stopped
doing what they were, and instead focus on doing tooling? Maybe, but given the
very very limited number of people and their skills I doubt it'd have been a
good trade.

> So I propose a better question. Why doesn't PostgreSQL have free,
> enterprise-grade tools?

I think there's plenty of reasons, and everyone will weigh them differently:
For one, the development community is actually surprisingly small, especially
a couple years back; only in the last few years that's changed to some degree.
Which means we're often struggling to get the crucially needed server features
done, not to speak of delving into a bunch of features outside of our
expertise.

Another big reason, and that might sound counterintuitive, is PostgreSQL's
license. Because of it and the long community support cycles, companies around
PG have a hard time making money w/ licensing etc. So they have to focus on
support, training and value-adds. A number companies tried / try to make money
selling software around postgres, more enterprise-y tooling among that. Often
that doesn't turn out to work that well, because it's actually a lot of work,
and without input from the larger community they don't get the necessary
market penetration.

Thirdly, I think that PG's development is done by a number of different
companies, with each company's share of development not being large enough to
sustain the project, explains some of this. I think it's overall an advantage,
but in some areas like coordinated planning, marketing and coordinated effort
it has its downsides too. If you want to make value-add software around core
you're not going to do so with a competitor.

Lastly, I think for a long time Pgadmin3 was seen as not being good, but kinda
somewhat acceptable. But its implementation wasn't particularly clean, in a
language relatively few GUI folks use (C++), using a dying and buggy GUI
framework (wxwidgets). I think it was for a long time just good enough that
MVP of something better wasn't all that minimal anymore.

~~~
justintocci
I actually left two comments and deleted them both. It's very difficult to say
these things from my position but I like everything you said a lot. If I had
said them my obvious bias would have detracted from it. From my position it's
just best if I keep my mouth shut, but these are important issues and I think
very much in need of attention.

~~~
anarazel
I'm interested in hearing other viewpoints as well. I'm certainly biased
myself here.

------
bdcravens
Screenshots on
[https://www.workflowproducts.com/postage.html](https://www.workflowproducts.com/postage.html)
should be clickable thumbnails for larger preview. Otherwise those are too
small to see much detail

~~~
justintocci
I've posted an issue for it. Thank you.

[https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues/334](https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues/334)

------
temp
>electron

Not a big fan of it so I think I'll continue using PSequel and pgAdmin3.

With Slack already running, I can't have another battery hog running
simultaneously.

~~~
justintocci
Understood.

If you're open minded, you may want to read this:
[https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/blob/master/Fact...](https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/blob/master/Facts_About_Electron_Performance.md)

Also, postage has a webserver mode that is simple to install (configure-make-
install) and it does not use Electron. You just use a browser window.

~~~
wongarsu
>You just use a browser window

I don't think anyone who has a problem with Electron is going to rejoice at
the option of a browser window instead. Typical Electron usage is problematic
because it is a browser.

But Postage sounds like it might be the rare Electron app that is actually
sensible.

~~~
mixedCase
>I don't think anyone who has a problem with Electron is going to rejoice at
the option of a browser window instead.

I'm not going to jump around in happiness but I sure as hell prefer it as it's
more resource efficient.

------
scient
A link to Github issues and a GH page with zero screenshots. Thats not how to
promote your OS project :(

~~~
justintocci
You're right. Perhaps it's time to promote Postage. I've opened an issue for
it here if you have any ideas:

[https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues/337](https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues/337)

------
taneem
Does this support JSONB column types? I was using Jetbrains Datagrip, which
I've been very happy with except for the fact that it doesn't seem to support
JSONB columns. I've switched back to PgAdmin 4, but the UI lag is really
distracting.

~~~
justintocci
If it doesn't do what you want just file an issue. We'll fix it. What do you
mean by support?

~~~
SolarNet
Not the OP, but I would suspect that the problem is displaying JSONB as if it
were plain text json without having to deal with manually converting it or
relying on DB operations.

~~~
snuxoll
Opened or found a bug on the IntelliJ YouTrack?

~~~
smw
I'll second this. JetBrains support has been fantastic responding to
individual issues I've had.

------
rosser
This looks great! You sold me with the object dependency graph alone.

As someone who's fed himself as a PostgreSQL DBA for over a decade now, I'm
excited to see what this can do for me. Thank you!

~~~
justintocci
We feel the same! The lack of progress with the official client was what drove
us to do it.

------
acmecorps
My personal favorite - Valentina Studio.

Available in windows, mac and linux. Can work with MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite.

[https://www.valentina-db.com/en/valentina-studio-
overview](https://www.valentina-db.com/en/valentina-studio-overview)

~~~
eswat
Thanks for the suggestion. While the OP is awesome over pgadmin I had been
looking for a good polyglot DB tool for a while.

~~~
_e
Check out Navicat Premium

from their website [1]:

Navicat Premium is a database development tool that allows you to
simultaneously connect to MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and
SQLite databases from a single application. Compatible with cloud databases
like Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, SQL Azure, Oracle Cloud and
Google Cloud. You can quickly and easily build, manage and maintain your
databases.

[1] [https://www.navicat.com/en/products/navicat-
premium](https://www.navicat.com/en/products/navicat-premium)

~~~
acmecorps
Yeah, navicat is great! It's just for a small time developer / student, the
$1,299.00 price tag is not really enticing. I'll gladly pay for a subscription
model like adobe cc.

~~~
snuxoll
Dunno if it's still offered anymore, but Navicat Premium Essentials was a
decent value - you buy a small base and add the features you want on top with
IAP's. I didn't care for any of the diagramming / data modeling stuff so I
just bought the base plus a couple add-ons.

Of course, I just use DataGrip now, but if you want Navicat see if Premium
Essentials is still around as it may work for you.

~~~
_e
I tried DataGrip when it first came out but found it lacking in some areas.
I'm sure much has changed since the first release but are you wishing there
are any features in Navicat that should be in DataGrip?

~~~
snuxoll
The notable missing features are the synchronization tools, beyond that I
haven't found anything of import missing. The data modeling tools in
IntelliJ/DataGrip aren't anything to write home about, but I rarely use them
(I've always just busted out Visio or LucidChart for UML/relational modeling
when I have to do it).

For my own work use I really have no choice but DataGrip, it's the only
database utility that supports DB2 for i, Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL
- all of which we use heavily at work. But also being a heavy user of other
JetBrains products (IntelliJ, ReSharper, PyCharm) having a familiar interface
is a huge positive over Navicat since all of my keyboard shortcuts work the
same and I only have two different (VS vs IntelliJ-based IDE) ways I have to
remember how to do code snippets instead of three.

~~~
_e
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the two.

You might find Vertabelo [1] useful and possible replacement of LucidChart &
Visio for db modeling.

[1] [http://www.vertabelo.com/](http://www.vertabelo.com/)

------
unlimit
Great work, I will surely check this out. At this moment I use pgAdmin 4.1 and
I don't really like it.

There is a typo in the Description field of your
[https://www.workflowproducts.com/about.html](https://www.workflowproducts.com/about.html)
page.

Desktop is written as destop.

~~~
justintocci
Fixed! Thank you!

------
kkoppenhaver
On a related note, a former co-worker built a similar tool. It's been helpful
for me!

[https://sosedoff.github.io/pgweb/](https://sosedoff.github.io/pgweb/)

------
vdijkbas
I wrote a PR[1] for NixOS that adds a postage service. Just add the following
to your configuration.nix to enable a postage web server:

    
    
      {
       services.postage = {
         enable = true;
         connections = {
           "local" = "hostaddr=127.0.0.1 port=5432 dbname=postgres";
         };
       };
      }
    

BTW the postage devs were very helpful in fixing packaging issues.

[1]
[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/27796](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/27796)

------
yellowapple
"Compiling Postage from source will only give you the server version and all
first time users should try the desktop version first."

Sorry what? How does one go about "compiling" the desktop version, then? Or
the installers that are supposedly great?

Something really reeks of red flags over here.

~~~
icebraining
Seems like you just need to run the package-nix.sh or package-windows.bat
scripts, which compile _and_ package it as an electron app.

~~~
justintocci
This is correct, thank you icebraining.

We stand by the README wording because we've gotten a lot of feedback from
users who are not developers. There are additional README documents for
developers.

------
spacetexas
Looks great! This is another option I've been using which I can suggest.
[https://github.com/web-pal/DBGlass](https://github.com/web-pal/DBGlass)

Also based on Electron

~~~
scrollaway
I've been using sqlectron (which is also based on electron), because that's
the only one I could get working with Redshift (a Postgres 8.0 fork):
[https://github.com/sqlectron/sqlectron-
gui/](https://github.com/sqlectron/sqlectron-gui/)

Edit: I think I'll be sticking with sqlectron for now. Postage looks pretty
featureful but very quirky. Good work on it though, good to have more free
alternatives to Datagrip/pgadmin3 on Linux.

------
makkesk8
Looks great! Decided to install it and test it only to be met with a blank
screen, the dev console contains no errors as well. Anyone else having this
issue? (windows 10, latest release)

~~~
watsocd
I got the same. Just a blank screen. When I clicked on the menu selections to
edit the configuration files, it just opened another empty window.

Windows 10 latest.

~~~
justintocci
I'm trying but I can't reproduce the error.

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Version 10.0.14393 Build 14393(latest)

uninstalled Postage removed the following folders: C:\Users\jtocci\\.postage
C:\Users\jtocci\AppData\Roaming\Postage C:\Program Files (x86)\Workflow
Products

Downloaded Postage.Windows.3.2.16.zip tried to install by double-click.
nothing happened. (known Electron issue) right click to run as administrator
install for all users, default location

Postage popped right up. Any ideas how I can get the error you're getting?

~~~
watsocd
I did not install on C:. I installed on D:

I uninstalled and reinstalled as Administrator C: and it works now.

~~~
justintocci
Excellent! I opened an issue:

[https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues/339](https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/issues/339)

We'll see if we can reproduce. Should be easy now.

------
patrickbolle
Thanks for this, PGAdmin is painfully slow and clunky for me. Will give this a
shot tomorrow morning!

------
jaequery
it is good to see some one working on this, because Postgres really comes
short when it comes to GUI clients when compared to Mysql.

------
drew___
Any plans for Linux support? I'm desperate for a postgresql admin suite that
runs on Linux and in particular copes well with HiDPI displays.

~~~
JelteF
Did you even check the downloads page? Theres rpm and dep packages:
[https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/releases](https://github.com/workflowproducts/postage/releases)

------
executive
Any PostGIS support?

~~~
justintocci
We're actually working on mapping right now for a potential product so it
might be possible to add something cool to Postage but I don't know what it
would look like. Anything in particular you'd like to see?

~~~
JosephRedfern
Not OP, but I'd be cool to be able to view the results of a query on a map.
For instance, if we did `SELECT * FROM points WHERE created < '2016-07-30'`
and Postage detected a spatial column, show the returned geometries on a map
(using leaflet.js or something similar, perhaps?).

~~~
justintocci
Hmm. I don't know. I think we'd need to show them in relationship to some map,
like google or bing for it to make any sense though right? Would there be a
legal way to do that? Or am I wrong?

Help me out here.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
I work in this sector - best and simplest use-case is to run your own OSM
basemap and satellite tiles and fetch them on the client using Leaflet,
embedding them in your application and rendering the data on top of it.

You'd only probably want to support one or two projections out of the box
(EPSG 4326 and 3857, the respective geographic and projected coordinate
systems that pretty much are the de-facto standard in GIS). The end-user would
have to use PostGIS spatial query to project the data if they wanted to see it
on map.

Then you would retrieve the extent (bounding box) of the data from the query,
send that to your server, fetch the tiles, and have the Leaflet client render
basemap under the data. You could look into
[https://github.com/lukasmartinelli/osm-
liberty](https://github.com/lukasmartinelli/osm-liberty) for some inspiration
of self-hosted OSM.

------
opmac
How is this any better than any other database admin tool?

~~~
justintocci
The chief goal was to make Postage faster than anything else. We've largely
succeeded.

~~~
spapas82
Hello, thank you for this app it is really great. I am not sure if it is
really faster than anything else however it _definitely feels faster_ than any
other postgresql client I've tried (ok, except HeidiSQL but HeidiSQL has
various problems with Postgresql).

Great work!

P.S One feature I'm missing is to extract the selected data (in the Edit Data
view of a table) to a CSV or to the clipboard - is it possible? I wasn't able
to find out how to do it :/

~~~
justintocci
Select the records you want and just use ctrl-c on win or cmd-c on mac

