For teams who don’t work in data every day the charts will look familiar right down to the color scheme. PopSQL gives you the same look-and-feel of Google Sheets, but with the added functionality of scheduling. Visualization-heavy BI tools like Tableau have more robust charting. If you or your colleagues have ever used Salesforce, it’s very similar to creating a report first then adding it to your dashboard. To add a chart to a dashboard you need to have a SQL query ready and saved. This is probably my favourite feature for data exploration on the fly, rather than scrolling around a grid or shuffling data between tools. They can ask questions earlier, add their thoughts on what else they would like to see next, and the project is delivered on time. These projects are delivered faster when you can mock up a dashboard quickly for the stakeholder. Part of the reason data projects run slowly is the back-and-forth with our stakeholders as we learn more about the data. Rather than exporting the data and adding it to a BI tool or Excel, there’s an option to see a chart. The results editor is more than just a grid. Not all tools come with a job agent or scheduler out-of-the-box so I’m a big fan of this feature. Queries can be shared, scheduled, and added to by teammates from here. This is great for those who are just getting started with SQL, and folks like me who should know better and just forget to add a LIMIT. Lucky for me there are some guardrails put up in the PopSQL editor which limit the results to 100 rows. It turns out this is a long-running query with just one of the tables being 58M rows. I haven’t used this database before so I used a recommended query from the RNAcentral team. I’m not an expert in this kind of data, but I might be soon!
When I took the PopSQL browser-based tool for a spin I used the RNAcentral public database. All the popular database types are supported with language guides available if you need an extra helping hand. This makes getting started accessible for data professionals and business users alike. Like other tools, getting up and running with PopSQL is as simple as providing your database connection details.
After this, there are instructions on how to connect to your database to start querying.
To use PopSQL you’ll need to sign up for a free trial. In this post, I’m going to explore a dataset I’ve never used before, write some code, create a dashboard, and test out the PopSQL team’s favorite features.
But being able to share both the code and the results quickly is a game-changer. If you’ve never used a tool like this before you may be wondering - what is a collaborative SQL editor, and why do I need one?Ĭode editors, even those designed with data analysts in mind, are nothing new. That said, these are my impressions and opinions. This is a sponsored post - PopSQL contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in reviewing their collaborative SQL editor, and provided access for me to test it out. Tools like PopSQL empower product managers, marketing, and customer success teams to not just interpret the story behind the numbers but share results quickly and easily.
No longer only the domain of data analysts, anyone with the right tools and some SQL skills can get started exploring data.