[smt88]

I see two features that Airforms has that Retool doesn't:

1. Airforms can be self-hosted

2. Airforms creates a database diagram

Honestly I'm not sure #2 is useful. I've been working heavily with database for 20 years and have never found one to be useful. Laypeople might feel differently, and it doesn't hurt to have it, of course.

Beyond that, Retool has all the features that Airforms has and a lot more. Retool is genuinely amazing and a mature product. I've used it extensively.

That said, Retool is expensive and not great for non-coders. If non-coders can really use Airforms effectively, then that's a big differentiator. The price is too, of course.

[interlocutor]

Does Retool have a query builder? Does it support query parameters? If not how do you find the record you want to update? Does it support displaying fields from lookup tables (i.e., tables joined via foreign key)? How do you pick a record from a foreign table (when you want to update the foreign key itself)?

[smt88]

> Does Retool have a query builder?

Yes. It may not be exactly like the one in Airforms. You can do CRUD operations/mappings without writing any SQL, or you can drop into SQL (with autocomplete and a schema browser) if you need more complexity.

> Does it support query parameters?

Yes.

> Does it support displaying fields from lookup tables (i.e., tables joined via foreign key)?

Yes.

> How do you pick a record from a foreign table (when you want to update the foreign key itself)?

There are multiple ways to do it. The easiest way is to run a query to get the IDs (and labels) from the table you're joining and then add that to some kind of input (list, table, etc.)

Like I said in a previous comment, a lot of this stuff requires knowing how to code or at least some technical understanding of databases, which might be a differentiator.