• November 6 2010 - Letalite 0.1 released! This is an alpha release for anyone curious to try it out. You'll find download links below.

Letalite is a graphical SQL client for GNU/Linux (a Windows release is in the works though). The goal is to create an easy to use, yet powerful SQL client. We're still in early development, many features are missing and we currently only support MySQL 5.1 or higher, but PostgreSQL support is on its way.

The intended audience of this software is just about anyone who deals with an SQL database, but in particular developers who often need quick and easy access to data without having to repeat the same queries over and over again during the course of a work day.

If you decide to try the alpha, do not use it on important data! As the GPL licence states, this software is provided AS IS, and the current release should be considered a preview for those interested in trying it out.

Please visit our sourceforge project page for file releases, forums, or to contact the developers.

Here is a direct download link to the latest release for your convenience.

To install, run "sudo python setup.py install" from the directory where you unpacked the archive. Remove sudo if you use other means of becoming root. To run, just type "letalite" in your terminal (sorry, no fancy desktop icons yet). If you want to try the application without installing, you may do so by navigating to the letalite subdirectory where all the sources are, and run "python letalite.py".

In case you don't like reading README files, here is what you need to install before running:

• Python 2.6 (NOT 3.x), pygtk, pygtksourceview2 (already installed on most modern distributions)
• MySQLDb - the python/mysql database connector (sudo apt-get install python-mysqldb on Ubuntu)
• paramiko - if you want SSH support (sudo apt-get install python-paramiko)

Table browser

The table browser lets you view the contents of a table. Filters can be applied to control what rows are displayed. Rows can be edited, added, or deleted. One particularly useful feature is foreign key linking; if you have a foreign key declared that references a row in another table, a simple click with the middle mouse button on the referencing column will bring up a new browser window with the referenced row displayed.

Table editor

The table editor lets you edit the structure of a table, i.e. add or remove columns, defince indices, and so on.

Query window

In the query window, any SQL query can be executed. Queries can be saved for later use so that you don't have to type them in every time.

Main window

The main window provides a list of user defined connections, their schemas, and tables. Basic operations like adding and removing tables can be performed here.

The rest

Letalite also comes with SSH tunneling support (if you install the Python library paramiko). This enables you to connect to SQL servers that live behind a firewall, provided that you have an SSH account on that machine.

Letalite is written in Python using PyGTK. Therefore, you might wonder if it runs on other platforms than GNU/Linux. The answer is yes, but due to various dependencies such as gtksourceview2, the installation procedure is anything but fun. And since we want to prevent you from not having fun, we're not going to try explaining the procedure of how to run it on anything else (well, maybe if you drop us a mail). We're currently working on a binary release for Windows, after which we will turn our attention to MacOS X. Other GNU unix systems like BSD should work out of the box as long as the required dependencies are installed.