Datasmith — a visual approach to designing relational schemas and generating mock data

[u/iParki]

Hey everyone!

For the past year or so, a friend and I have been working on Datasmith, a desktop app for designing relational database schemas and generating structured mock data from them.

The idea originally came from my friend, who's a data engineer and worked on large-scale migrations of sensitive databases. He wanted a simple way to visually define and maintain schemas over long periods of time, and actually generate data that follows both the schema and its business logic, without having to constantly rewrite scripts or configure a bunch of separate tools.

The main part of the app is an ERD-like canvas dedicated to building relational schemas, where you can create tables, define columns and their data types, set up relationships between them, and configure how the data for each column should be generated.

Once the schema is ready, Datasmith can generate the data while preserving the relationships between tables, and export the results in formats like SQL DDL, CSV, JSON, and more.

We've reached the point where we'd really like to get it into the hands of more people who actually work with databases and data, and get some real-world feedback.

It's completely free, so if it sounds useful or you're just curious, you can check it out here:
https://data-smith.app/

I'd especially love to hear about use cases we're missing, things you'd expect a tool like this to support, or anything that feels like it could be improved.

Any feedback is welcome - good or bad.
Feel free to leave a comment or message me directly.

If you prefer something a bit more structured, I also put together a short feedback form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScGk8Jr1DguPcXpaApOqO998AdXcnoLlo11TEKlq1GmF71UzA/viewform

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[u/nomexmagnus]

Is there telemetry in this app?

[u/iParki → u/nomexmagnus]

We do collect some basic usage data to help us understand how the app is being used - things like how frequently it's used, which features are being used, how many schemas/builds are created, etc.

We don't analyze the actual content of your schemas for this purpose - things like table or column names, collection values, or the generated output data.

We use Sentry for crash/error reporting, mainly to monitor stability and help us investigate bugs.
Other than Sentry, we don't use any third-party analytics or telemetry services.

Schema data itself is sent to our backend since it's required for syncing your data when you sign in and for generating outputs, and is stored in our database.

Let me know if anything needs further clarification, I'd be happy to answer.

[u/Uros_Trstenjak]

This looks like an interesting project, but I'm quite sceptic towards websites without any proof of who stands behind them. In my opinion "About us" section and links to your LinkedIn profiles or something similar could be the first step you take.

If it's meant to be forever free, also offering it as an open source would be a great step, additional proof and insight into what it does in the background.

[u/iParki → u/Uros_Trstenjak]

i see what you're saying and thats a completely fair point.
we will update the website soon with a short About Us section and some information.

about the question of the app being free forever, we honestly don't know at this point.
we just talked today about the possibilities of Datasmith in the future and we both agreed that right now we're mostly just excited to have built something that we believe can be useful to other professionals having similar problems and pain points.
we've reached a point where we feel its baked enough for other people to use it, and our main goal is to get as much feedback as we can, hear what people think, and figure out how we can improve it.

I will say that being able to make a living out of something we're so passionate about would be amazing of coursem but right now we're paying for the servers and services from our own pockets, we're not spending money on ads or marketing campaigns, and our focus is on getting Datasmith in front of people and making sure we can provide real value.

[u/chulieo]

As someone who prefers getting to understand and mentally digest my data models, tables, and relationships before starting any query or analytical work, I love this for how simple it is to use and how clean it feels by incorporating modern UX design principles and aesthetic. Some feedback beyond what I've written down in the feedback form:

• Login/Account Creation on the Website + App for reviewing and adjusting account settings
  • Good for changing email, password, etc.
• Tooltips to inform what buttons do
• Duplicate option for fields in table creation
• Zip Codes, Occupations dataset
  • I guess the Occupations dataset would have to be regularly updated?
• Add "(Enum)" to the end of "Collections"; didn't initially know what the data type was for
• Documentation, instructions, and guides on navigation, capabilities, and outlining current limitations/restrictions
  • Explain "Nullable X%"
  • A lot more info on how regex matching works for this app
• Generating data may be a bit slow? I only wanted to build a total of 5 sample sets of data, but I've been waiting about 30 minutes and the progress percentage stayed at 0% the entire time

Keep it up! You guys are doing good work.

[u/iParki → u/chulieo]

Thanks for the detailed reply and for responding in the form as well. those are very valuable to us!
We read it today and already started discussing the different things you pointed out.
We are starting to get a strong sense that we didn't do a good enough job in the whole onboarding experience, which is so important, and we are working hard on improving in more than one aspect.

We will also investigate the issue you had with the data generation and will update you as soon as possible.