For self-hosting, I am wondering if anyone has tried linking in data from an external source of read-only data into a Baserow table using Postgres’s foreign data functionality. I assume you could make a query/view in the foreign database that meets the format required to be a Baserow table.
Has anyone tried this? Are there any impediments that would prevent this from working?
It would be “next level” to facilitate access to internal enterprise data via the Baserow tool.
I have never heard of foreign data in PostgreSQL before. I’m curious what you want to do with it. Do you already have an existing PostgreSQL database and you somehow want to use data stored in Baserow directly in there?
Baserow uses PostgreSQL to store the table data every table your create in Baserow will have a PostgreSQL table as well. You might also be able to mix foreign data in your application instead of directly in PostgreSQL. Do you have the ability to open a second PostgreSQL directly to the Baserow PostgreSQL database?
I haven’t fully thought it through, but what I was getting at was the concept of Baserow tables that incorporate live data into Baserow, somehow using the Foreign Data function to look through to, for example, a query in a SQL Server database that summarizes live sales data. The key thing is the Foreign Data function can work with any foreign database type but make it seem like a local Postgres table. This could open up all of a company’s databases of all sorts to be usable within Baserow.
In my fantasy world, Baserow would facilitate this by administering the Foreign Data configuration for the user (a bit like entering ODBC driver info) and the user just specifying the tables/views in the foreign source database to incorporate. Of course, the users and their IT teams would need to ensure the incorporated table had the properly coded index keys, etc, that make it useful for linking to normal Baserow tables.
Not sure if that makes sense or how hard it would be to do. But the size of the prize could be huge for enterprises if it did work.