The data section in the Budibase UI is where you add and manage your data. Budibase apps rely on data and it is strongly advised to create your data structure before designing your web application. Your data structure will involve tables, columns, rows, and views - these are the building blocks that hold and present your data in a structured manner.

Predefining the data structure also greatly helps in building the UI as the UI can be automatically generated based on the data structure, as well as any logic, filtering, and sorting.

Within Budibase we have a single built-in data source and several external data sources. When using a self-hosted instance of Budibase, an external data source can still live on the same device, just not within the Budibase container.

Getting started with Data

By default, every App installation will start with a Budibase DB data source. This database contains a Users table which is considered a special table. This table is not removable as the functioning of your application depends on it. Any further BudibaseDB tables will also be added to this same source.

Adding new Data Sources

You can easily add new data sources to any application you're setting up. There's a broad set of available external data sources you can connect to right from the Budibase UI. You can add new data sources by clicking the + icon on the top left of the screen when you're in your app on the Data tab, as seen in the image below.

Once you've clicked the Add Data Source button, you'll see a modal presented with the available data sources. Pick the data source of choice, and you'll be presented with a configuration screen to connect to your remote data source.

You can add as many data sources as you like easily. To know more about each particular data source, look at the relevant documentation page in the menu.