02 / 2024–2025 · arias tech solutions
A dashboard builder for people who don't write SQL
Drag a field, get a chart. The hardest thing I've built, because every mistake has to stay recoverable.
the brief
Business users wanted dashboards without asking an engineer. Connectors for REST APIs, WebSocket streams and SQL/NoSQL databases; drag-and-drop widgets; shareable results.
what I did
Every widget is a config object rather than a component, so a new chart type is data, not code. Dashboard state lives in NgRx with every mutation as an action, which gave undo almost for free. On the server, a query planner validates and cost-caps anything a user assembles before Postgres ever sees it.
what broke
Early on, a user built a widget joining two large tables with no filter, and it slowed the shared database to a crawl for everyone. That's the day the cost-cap got written.
what I'd change
I'd version dashboards from day one instead of bolting migrations on later — schemas users can edit will drift, and I spent a fortnight catching up with that.