Goodbye SQLite Manager…
Late last year, I discovered that my favorite SQLite GUI was defunct. The SQLite Manager was a plugin for Firefox that allowed you to create and interact with SQLite databases with a simple yet highly functional interface. It had good support for importing and exporting csv files, color coding of cells based on data types, and a convenient feature for cycling back and forth between your SQL statements. Since it was a Firefox plugin it was guaranteed to work on any operating system, and since Firefox is installed on machines across my campus I knew I could rely on it for creating data extracts for students and faculty – I’d package data up in SQLite and send it to them along with a link to the plugin.
SQLite is the most widely deployed database in the world with more applications than we can count, including several high-profile projects. You may want to check out more Mac applications, such as Navicat for SQLite, SQLite Sorcerer or SQLite Management, which might be related to SQLite. SQLite extension functions for Mac. If you are using DB Browser for SQLite, go to 'Tools', 'Load Extension', and search for this file after downloading it. It also provides an SQLite browser for showing all tables, views, triggers, etc. And an SQL editor for writing queries and statements to execute against the SQLite database and many more features. Download RazorSQL.
Firefox goes through about a million versions a year these days, and after a major upgrade last fall (to Firefox Quantum) most of the existing plugins, including the SQLite Manager, were no longer compatible. An upgrade it highly unlikely, as a few things changed under the hood of Firefox that makes the plugin unusable. While it still works on the Firefox Extended Support Release, in the long run the writing is on the wall.
Sqlite Browser Windows 10
Hello DB Browser for SQLite!
After searching through many alternatives I discovered the DB Browser for SQLite. It runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux and there’s a version for mobile. It was easy to install and has a clean interface. It provides a number of convenient tools and menus that you can use in place of writing SQL DDL, and in some cases it expands the functionality of SQLite by enabling a number of ALTER TABLE commands that are not part of SQLite SQL (like renaming and dropping columns). The Browse Data window makes it easy to quickly thumb through, sort, and filter records and to edit individual values by hand. The Execute SQL window has auto-complete and color-coded syntax, and you can see the database schema in one tab as you write your SQL in another (making it easy to reference table and column names). You can import and export data as CSV (or any delimited text file) or SQL files, and you can save the results of SELECT queries as CSV.
One interesting addition is that there’s actually a Save (Write Changes) and Undo button. So when you create, modify, or drop records, columns, or tables you see the result, but the act isn’t final until you commit the changes. A nice safety feature, especially for db novices.
Execute SQL and View DB Schema
Best Sqlite Gui For Mac
I encountered a few quirks, but nothing insurmountable. I was using the nightly build version without realizing it, and when importing a CSV file the database takes a best guess as to what the data types for the columns should be. Even though the import screen gives you the option to specify that values are quoted, my quoted numeric fields were still saved as numbers and not text. As a result, ID codes like FIPS or ZIP Codes lose their leading zeros and are saved as integers.
The project is managed on github, so I went ahead and posted an issue. The developers were super responsive, and a discussion ensued over whether this behavior was desirable or not. We found two work-arounds. First, if you build an empty table with the desired structure, and then go to import the CSV, if you provide the name of that empty table as the new table name the db will import your data into that table. Alternatively, if I went and downloaded the latest stable release (3.10.1) the default behavior is that all columns are imported as text, which is a safer bet. You can use the GUI to change the types after import. The issue was marked as a bug, and will be addressed in a future release – one possible solution is to provide an option to turn the autodetect feature on (to determine what the types should be) or off (to import everything as text).
The browser also has a feature to attach a database to the current database, but when you do the attachment it appears like nothing happened – you can’t see or browse the objects in database number two. But it IS attached (you can see every statement that’s been executed in a helpful log window) and you can copy a table from one db to the other like this:
You run this within the current database, and database2 is the attached database (when you attach a db you provide an alias for referencing it).
These are minor quibbles. The DB Browser for SQLite is cross-platform, stable, has a clean interface with nice features, and is actively developed by a responsive and friendly team. I’ll be using it for all my SQLite tasks and projects, and will recommend it to others.
Spatialite?
An alternative I considered was to simply use the Spatialite GUI for both regular and spatial databases. It also has a simple, solid, and functional interface and supports spatial SQL, giving you the best of both worlds. So why not? While it works great for my own purposes it’s not something I can recommend to new users who are not GIS folks, either in my work or in the census data book I’m writing. Just figuring out where to download it from the website is overly complex, and while there are binaries for MS Windows there are none for Mac users. You’d have to install it from the source files, which is over the top for novices. Linux users may get lucky and find it in their software repos (it’s included for Debian and Ubuntu). The database browser in QGIS has matured in recent years, so that’s another option for GIS users who want to work with Spatialite or PostGIS.
Best Sqlite Browser For Mac
Now if we only had a good GUI for PostgreSQL… I tried pgAdmin 4 about a year ago, and it was so bad that I’m still clinging to pgAdmin III as long as it still lives. But this is a different story, and one I’ll return to and investigate fully when it comes time to teach my spatial database course next year.