Chapter 3

The workspace

A workspace is one connection and one database. It holds your tabs, two sidebars, the console log and any split panes, and you can keep several open in one window.

The toolbar runs across the top of the window. Its buttons, from left to right:

The toolbar with buttons on the left, the status pill in the middle, and more buttons and the window controls on the right — The toolbar. The status pill in the middle shows the connection, the database and the open table.

Button	What it does
Menu	Opens Rowan's menus: File, Edit, View, Tools, Connection, Navigate and Help. `Alt` opens them too.
Left sidebar	Shows or hides the left sidebar (`Ctrl+0`).
Connection	Opens the connection list, to open another connection as a new workspace (`Ctrl+Shift+K`).
Discard / Preview / Commit	Appears only while you have staged changes. See Commit and discard.
Safe Mode	Shows the connection's Safe Mode level, and changes it. See Safe Mode.
Database	Opens the list of databases on the server (`Ctrl+K`).
SQL	Opens a new SQL editor tab (`Ctrl+E`).
Status pill	The connection, the database and the open item, with the tag's color. While a query runs it shows its progress; after one finishes, how long it took. Click it for connection options.
Notifications	Background jobs and server messages. See Background jobs.
Reload	Reloads the workspace: the open table and the schema (`Ctrl+R`).
Metrics	Opens the Metrics Board.
Command	Opens Open Anything (`Ctrl+P`).
Panels	Show or hide the console log and the right sidebar.

Buttons that don't apply right now are hidden rather than dimmed, so the toolbar stays quiet. Hover over any button to see its name and shortcut.

Right-click an empty part of the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar…, or choose View > Customize Toolbar….

The Customize Toolbar sheet showing the current toolbar as tiles and the items you can add — Drag items into the toolbar, along it, or out of it. Changes show at once.

Drag an item into the bar where you want it; drag a tile along the bar to move it, or off the bar to remove it.
Besides the standard buttons, you can add Connect (a menu to open a database, a connection or a new window), User (User Management), Workspaces (Show All Workspaces), separators and spaces.
Items before the status pill sit on the left, items after it on the right.
From the keyboard: arrows choose a tile, Ctrl with the arrows moves it, Delete removes it, and Enter adds an item at the end.
To start over, choose Restore Defaults. Every window uses the same arrangement.

Tabs#

Every table, view, function and SQL editor you open gets a tab. Tabs keep their place: a table tab remembers its filter, sort, selected cell and scroll position when you come back to it.

Which tab an item opens in#

Click an item in the sidebar to open it in the current tab, if that tab is a table, view or function with no staged changes. A tab with changes, or an SQL editor, is never replaced; the item opens in another tab.
Double-click an item to keep its tab open, so the next click doesn't replace it.
Right-click an item and choose Open in New Tab to always get a new one.

Ctrl+T opens a new tab and Ctrl+E a new SQL editor. In Settings > General you can choose whether Ctrl+T opens an SQL editor or an empty tab that the next table you open fills.

Move between tabs#

Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+] for the next tab, Ctrl+[ for the previous one.
Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 to jump to a tab by its position.
Alt+Left and Alt+Right go back and forward through the items you've opened, like a browser.
Drag a tab to change the order.

Rename a tab#

Double-click a tab's name, or select it and press F2, or right-click it and choose Rename Tab…. Type the new name and press Enter, or Esc to cancel. Clear the name to go back to the default. Renaming a tab that's linked to a saved query renames the query too.

Close and reopen tabs#

Press Ctrl+W to close a tab. Closing is never risky: SQL editor tabs are saved as you type, and Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last tabs you closed, with their text. Rowan asks first only when it matters:

The tab has staged data changes. You can review them, discard them, or cancel.
A query is still running in it. You can stop it and close, or cancel.
The tab is linked to a .sql file with unsaved edits.

Workspaces, the database stack and windows#

Each workspace is one connection and one database. When a window holds two or more, a narrow database stack appears at the far left, with one icon per workspace in its connection's color.

The database stack at the window's left edge showing three workspaces — The database stack. Click an icon to switch workspaces; drag to reorder.

To open another database on the same server, press Ctrl+K and double-click it. See Open a database.
To open another connection, press Ctrl+Shift+K and double-click it.
To switch, click an icon in the stack, or press Ctrl+Shift+] and Ctrl+Shift+[.
To see every workspace at once, press Ctrl+Shift+\.

To open a new window, press Ctrl+N. Right-click a workspace's icon in the stack for Close Connection, Close Other Connections and Move Tab to New Window, which moves the workspace into a window of its own. Hover over an icon to see its connection and database; in Settings you can show the names beside the icons.

Open a database#

Press Ctrl+K, or click Database in the toolbar, to see the server's databases with a search field.

The database list with a search field, the analytics, guide_demo and postgres databases, and a New Database button — The database list. The database you're in is marked Current.

Type to narrow the list. Double-click a database, or select it and choose Open, to open it in a workspace of its own. Open in Current Tab switches this workspace to it instead.
New Database… creates one, with a template, encoding and collation.
Right-click a database for Open in New Tab, Open in Current Tab, Copy Name, Rename… and Drop…. To drop one, you type its name to confirm. The database you're in is marked Current, and can't be renamed or dropped from its own workspace.

The left sidebar has three views, chosen at its top. Each has its own search field.

Items#

Items lists what's in the current schema: tables with their row counts, views, materialized views, functions, procedures, sequences and types. Above them are Recent (the last five items you opened) and Pinned items.

To change schema, use the schema menu at the bottom of the sidebar. It also has New Schema…, Rename and Delete.
To pin an item to the top, right-click it and choose Pin to Top.
To group items your own way, right-click an item and choose Move to Group > New Group. Groups are kept on your computer and change nothing on the server.
Click Tables, Views or Functions to see an overview of them all, with kind, row estimate, size and comment.
The ⋯ menu has the Matching Strategy (fuzzy or contains), which sections to show, Load System Schemas, and Show Columns to list each table's columns under it.
The + at the bottom creates tables, views, functions, schemas and item groups. See Create a table.

Press Ctrl+Shift+F to search the sidebar, and Space to open the selected item.

Queries#

Queries holds your saved queries, in folders. See Saved queries.

History#

History lists every statement you've run, newest first, with when it ran. See Query history.

The right sidebar shows the selected row, one field per line, with each column's type. Press Space in the grid, or click its button in the toolbar, to show or hide it.

The right sidebar showing each field of the selected order with its type — The right sidebar. Edit a field here as you would in the grid; the change is staged.

In the Structure view, the right sidebar shows the selected column instead. See Row detail for editing and searching fields.

The bottom bar#

Every table tab has a bar at the bottom of the grid:

Data, Structure, Index, Triggers and DDL switch views. Ctrl+Alt+[ and Ctrl+Alt+] switch between Data and Structure.
+ adds a row (or a column, in Structure), the funnel opens the filter bar, and the arrow exports.
The row count, the rows in view, and the paging controls: previous page, the gear for Limit and Offset, and next page.

In a narrow pane, the bar folds its less-used items into a ⋯ menu.

The console log#

The console log shows every statement Rowan sends to the server, with the time: the pages of rows you browse, catalog queries, your own SQL and commits. Press Ctrl+Alt+C to show or hide it.

Data shows the statements that read or change your data; Meta shows the ones Rowan uses to read the schema; All shows both.
The <> button turns syntax highlighting on or off, and the trash button clears the log.

Open Anything#

Press Ctrl+P to open any table, view, function, schema, database, saved query or command by typing a few letters of its name.

Press Ctrl+P, or click Command in the toolbar.
Type part of a name. Letters don't need to be next to each other: ordit finds order_items.
Use the arrow keys to choose, then press Enter. Press Esc to close it.

With nothing typed, Open Anything lists Rowan's tools and features, such as Show Diagram, Metrics Board, Import from CSV and Backup.

Split panes#

Split the workspace to see two things side by side: a table beside an SQL editor, or two tables at once.

The workspace split into two panes, with the orders table on the left and an SQL editor and its results on the right — Two panes: the orders table, and an SQL editor with its result beside it.

Split Pane Right (Ctrl+Shift+D) and Split Pane Down, from the menu or the editor's right-click menu, split the focused pane. A pane can be split again.
Each pane has its own tabs, and its own grid, filters and Structure view. A table in a split pane uses a connection of its own, so paging one never waits for the other.
Ctrl+Alt+] and Ctrl+Alt+[ move between panes. The focused pane is the one the toolbar, the right sidebar and table shortcuts act on.
To move a tab to another pane, drag it to that pane's tab strip, or right-click it and choose Move to Next Pane. Drop a tab on the right or bottom of an editor to split there.
Close Pane moves its tabs back to the main pane.

Two tables side by side, orders and audit_log, each with a staged edit — Two tables in two panes. Staged changes from every pane commit together.

Edits in every pane go into the workspace's one set of staged changes, so one commit saves them all. Rowan refuses a split that would leave a pane too narrow to use.

Session restore#

Rowan keeps your work between launches:

The windows and workspaces you had open come back, with their table tabs, panes and pane sizes. To start with the connection list instead, turn off Reopen closed workspaces at startup in Settings > General.
Every SQL editor's text is saved as you type, so nothing is lost even if Windows restarts. Editor tabs always come back.
Each table's filters, sort, hidden columns, pinned columns and widths are remembered.

The workspace