GUI tools for Postgres
Some people love the terminal. Some people hate it. You might belong to any of above but in my personal experience, you can’t always use the terminal. There are some situations that you need a GUI tool. There are many GUI tools that support Postgres. But personally, I love open source tools. If you are new to this database stuff just like me you will also love to have a tool that supports a beginner. So I did some research and found out two popular GUI tools for Postgres. pgAdmin and DBeaver.
Setting Up Postgres with DBeaver
DBeaver is free OpenSource GUI tools that support many database systems. It supports any database that has a JDBC driver. It has many features and good support community. More importantly, it is a great tool for a beginner.
First, install DBeaver into your PC. If you want the JRE with the installation pack you should download the pkg installer. Otherwise, you should install the dmg but make sure you have Java 8 installed. This is how it looks like when installed
Click on new database connection then below window pops up.
Select PostgreSQL it will automatically select the suitable driver and download it.
These are the connection settings that pop up when you click next in the previous window. By default in Postgres, there is a database named postgres. And a superuser by your user name. It has no password. But I think its better if you can create a user your self. You can use the psql utility for that.
psql postgres
You can enter those details to the connection settings. In PostgreSQL pg_dump,pg_restore kind of files are in
/usr/local/bin
You should set this as the Local client when creating the connection. Otherwise, functions like restoring and creating a dump using IDE will be not available. After clicking finish that's it, setup is finished and you can use Postgres with DBeaver.
Setting Up Postgres with pgAdmin
First, download and install pgAdmin Latest version. Select the version and then download the .dmg file. If you are done installing start the pgAdmin server then go to
from your browser.
Click on Add New Server or right Click on servers and click create -> server. Provide a suitable name and go to connection tab.
Give connection details and save the connection. The server will create a connection and show you in the left.
Now the connection is created and you can whatever you need with those databases with the pgAdmin.
Comparison Between pgAdmin and DBeaver
On the first impression when I saw pgAdmin I felt it like phpmyadmin in MySQL. So it is not a desktop application. It is a web application. So when compared to DBeaver performance might be low in pgAdmin. Another plus point that I see in DBeaver is that if I need to deal with multiple database systems such as MsSQL, MySQL, PostgresSQL. I can use a single GUI tool for all of them and work at the same time with all of them with DBeaver. On the other hand, pgAdmin only supports for Postgres. From my personal experience, I feel like setting up pgAdmin is a bit easier when compared to DBeaver. Although being a web app pgAdmin use many resources it also creates a plus point as we can deploy it on a server and access it remotely by our browser. Which we can't do using DBeaver. And when writing some queries it gave me errors when using DBeaver but worked correctly when using MySQL Workbench. I don’t know whether this also happens with Postgres If you have some experience please let me know in the comment section. pgAdmin dashboard shows us a useful overview of database activity. which we cannot have from DBeaver.Also, its UI can be rearranged. By my personal experience so far I feel like DBeaver is a better option. But it all depends on the use case. Hope this article helps you to find the best one that suits you. If you are new to Postgres read my article about Postgres here.
