I use redshift occasionally for playing with some data. Its an amazing service(a datawarehousing solution) from AWS that you can use for analyzing large amounts of data.
Every time I need to use redshift (every couple of months) I begin my search for a decent client that I can use. A google search does not result in something concrete right off with full of discussions on quora and other places.
AWS official guides use SQL workbench. I found it lacking in basic features like displaying the list of connections, databases, schemas, tables, etc. The whole reason I am using GUI is that I don’t have to remember the database objects.
While any postgres GUI clients would work for running basic queries on redshift, things like IAM authentication, federated authentication require redshift JDBC drivers that I need to use.
Since I am only an occasional user I needed a free tool (preferably open source) to do the job and am not looking to pay for the software.
My final set of requirements for the tool were:
- Provides decent GUI.
- Can use redshift JDBC drivers.
- Can run on multiple platforms (mac, windows)
- Free(Permissive enough licensing for me to use it for commercial purposes. I support customers making my use commercial.) or open source.
After some search and trying out a couple of clients I stumbled on DBeaver. I am not going to provide a comparison of multiple tools that I tried but will focus on DBeaver that met my requirements.
My take:
- It is built on eclipse - so kinda heavy - but worked without any challenge.
- A generic SQL client that can connect to any database given the JDBC driver.
- Works on mac, windows and linux.
- It’s open source (Apache license)
While my needs are not extreme and I have not tested DBeaver to its full extent, it could work for a heavy user too. Check it out. All the best.
