Nothing can beat psql in speed in my opinion. pgXplorer carries the overhead of a GUI of course and there is an added level of abstraction when talking to the database. pgXplorer has been built with ease-of-use in mind.
> ..you're asking for "Port" twice...
Sorry about it. It has been rectified at the source. I shall be updating the installers shortly.
> what's the proposition? Why use pgXplorer instead of pgAdmin, for example?
Good question. I started with the premise to supplant pgAdmin as the open source GUI tool for postgres. But I don't hold that view anymore. I am thinking of pgXplorer as another open source GUI for postgres.
There are several design choices that are different from pgAdmin (and possibly other database GUI tools).
* First of all, we have one instance of pgXplorer handling only one database at a time. So in the unpalatable event that pgXplorer crashes, it brings down only that instance. While one could launch multiple pgAdmins as well, it lists all connections regardless.
* A 2-D grid like layout for tables,views and function on the main canvas with search option to quickly highlight a desired item. Very useful when dealing with names in Unicode, where there can be no perceptible alphabetical order (like Japanese).
* The SQL editor/console is fully Unicode ready. In pgAdmin, when doing a search/replace with Unicode characters, pgAdmin's editor does not work well.
* Editing tables and inserting data in tables handled in a better way than pgAdmin I think. Bulk updates can be done in pgXplorer when a single column is selected.
* Copying and pasting data into LibreOffice Calc/Excel with headers. Also, it is quicker than pgAdmin.
* A simple table designer for newly created (columnless) tables.
These are some salient features of pgXplorer. More features are on the anvil.
One thing that I have found virtually intolerable in any DB GUI client I've used is the latency after connection, presumably to load table definitions and other data for display. With psql, I connect and I just start going - the latency is imperceptible. I know that having such metadata readily visible is the reason people use GUI clients, but I find that I frequently don't need that. It's very easy for me to do a \d $tablename to see columns, or select count(1) from ... to get rowcounts as needed. In fact, the cost for doing this is roughly the same as the cost of clicking a table name to expand a schema in a GUI, so really all this sort of behavior does is get in my way.
Another thing which I would find enticing would be special attention to displaying query plans. The output of "explain" isn't exactly the clearest, even to someone who's got a pretty good idea how a DB works, and I run explain queries infrequently enough that I have to check the documentation to make sure I'm understanding the result. Even simple clues - e.g. color coding the output so sequential scans are red, for instance - would help.
Best of luck with it, though - and if I can help or if you want to bounce anything off me my e-mail is in my profile.
You are correct. Particularly to have auto-completion on table names in the SQL editor, highlighting primary key columns, etc.
(1) I understand that psql can be quicker in experienced hands. For me, particularly having to type out chinese characters for table names (I am not a native speaker of the language) is really difficult. pgXplorer eases some of that pain by auto-completing. So, in this specific case of mine, it is a bit quicker.
> Another thing which I would find enticing would be special attention to displaying query plans.
I presume you know about http://explain.depesz.com/? Very useful and open source too. I will be trying to add something similar in pgXplorer as well.
Thanks a lot for the helpful offer. I will certainly connect by email to discuss some related things to the project.
Edits: (1)
I regularly use psql as part of my job, but I gave pgXplorer a whirl. It seems less responsive than psql, but that's a big reason why I use the command line client anyway. One thing I noticed is that you're asking for "Port" twice in the connection properties dialog - I think you mean "Password" in the second instance. I'm probably not your target audience, but I'd like to know - what's the proposition? Why use pgXplorer instead of pgAdmin, for example?