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Beginners Guide

👋 Hello and welcome to the Beekeeper Studio community. I think you're going to like it here.

Beekeeper Studio is more than an app, come say hi:

Hey there!

This page will help you get familiar with Beekeeper Studio. If you've used similar applications in the past, feel free to explore the rest of the documentation site, or just start using Beekeeper Studio (it's pretty intuitive!)

If you're new to database management apps in general it might help to watch this walkthrough of Beekeeper Studio, I go through a bunch of major features

👉 Watch the Beekeeper Studio Walkthrough on YouTube

First step - install Beekeeper Studio

Beekeeper Studio is a desktop application, so the first step is to Install Beekeeper Studio

Lets explore Beekeeper Studio with a demo database

A quick and easy way to explore Beekeeper Studio's functionality is with the Sakila demo database -- it's a sample database modeling an old-school DVD rental store, like a Blockbuster.

Experts can skip to the end

If you already have a database you want to view, edit, and query, hop to it!

These topics will help you get started with the most commonly used features of Beekeeper Studio

Getting started with Sakila and Beekeeper Studio

  1. Make sure you have Beekeeper Studio downloaded and installed
  2. Download the Sakila database - this is a .db file - a self contained SQLite database file.
  3. Double click the sakila.db file you just downloaded.

Beekeeper will open, showing you the contents of the database:

Opening the demo database in Beekeeper Studio

Open a table and change some data

Double click on the film table in the left sidebar. This will open the data view for that table.

Remember - this is just a demo database, you can do whatever you like to it without any risk. Try clicking on the title cell for a movie and changing the movie name. You can save your changes by clicking the apply button in the footer.

Click apply to save changes

Write your first SQL query

Now you know how to view and edit table data, why not write some custom SQL to pull some interesting data out of the database.

Here's a sample query to count the number of films in the database grouped by rating (like PG-13):

SELECT
    film.rating, COUNT(DISTINCT inventory.film_id) AS film_count
    FROM film JOIN inventory
    ON film.film_id = inventory.film_id
    GROUP BY film.rating
    ORDER BY COUNT(inventory.film_id) DESC

Executing this produces the below result:

rating film_count
PG-13 213
NC-17 202
PG 183
R 189
G 171

Explore other Beekeeper Studio Features

It's time to fly the nest and explore Beekeeper Studio on your own 🕊.

Reach out if you need help

Stuck? Confused? Email us and we'll help - support@beekeeperstudio.io