SlashDB Can Turn Any Data Source Into A Website

Most programmers like two things: pizza and things that make their work easier. That’s why I was especially interested in SlashDB, a product that purports to turn any data source into accessible XML, JSON, or HTML. Created by programmer Victor Olex, the system allows you to connect almost any data to the web in a few seconds with a REST API.

“SlashDB is an automated web API for databases. In other words it makes every record in a database reachable by an intuitive hyperlink,” said Olex. “Related records are also linked, which effectively forms a graph facade over traditional SQL data. That web of data is available for reading, writing and searching over normal HTTP in various data formats.”

It works by turning queries into long URLs. For example, you could run something like “http://demo.slashdb.com/db/Chinook/Genre/Name/Classical/Track/InvoiceLine/Invoice/Total/” to get data from a DB and return it in various formats. You can even run these queries to output clean, usable HTML code on any web page.

The system is currently in place at a few clients and most recently Olex worked with the Aruba Tourism Authority to build a website with no real back end, just a database. They are also now available for sale on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. The “lite” version costs $250 per database and the company offers larger tiers for folks with lots of databases. While it’s no pizza, SlashDB does seem like an interesting solution for folks who don’t want to spend too much time on their data connection layer.