Neat. How does this compare to Airtable? https://airtable.com/
I think we've focused a lot more on relational support. For instance, on a detail page, you can view and edit all linked records, and add new ones inline: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/go-beyond-the-grid
We have a full-fledged query UI: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/focus-on-relevant-items
And we have a grouped view (think Trello meets spreadsheets), which is great for any kind of pipeline/kanban view: http://docs.fieldbook.com/docs/track-a-workflow
I know it's extremely important to strike the balance of complexity, capability and UX so this area is notoriously difficult to tread but I think whatever solution does it right without sacrificing customization extensibility is going to win big!
Fieldbook looks great and I hope it keeps getting better!
The spreadsheet model is fairly intuitive for the end-user. He and Rich Hickey both are pretty convinced that a Datalog-esque query engine is the way to go. 20 years ago, Lotus' Improv's model (where you separated the data manipulation from the data type constraints) was way ahead of its time and guaranteed so much more internal/referential integrity than 1-2-3. Modern-day Quantrix is probably the closest you'll get to it, used pretty heavily in niche finance.
MSR puts out some interesting work on the PLT behind alternate spreadsheet grammars[1] which are quite interesting too. Other than the obvious issues (ETL[2], ACLs/RBAC, presentation/extensibility) MSR has put out quite a few interesting papers out there. This is a very interesting problem domain to say the least. I've developed up-to-the-Pareto-point for this in the past for clients and if you get it right, it's a license to print money.
[1]http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/sumitg/pubs/pl... [2][both conventional a la SSIS and Informatica, as well as a Pipes-esque query; a premium feature you could easily charge into-the-Oracle-rates would be a Pipes-esque service with an SLA. I've been in enterprise consulting long enough to know that whether you're Ingersoll Rand, Haas, an REIT or Cravath, sanitized, guaranteed data is worth a lot, integration is worth even more.
Last time I researched this category, the best options I could find were MS Access and FileMaker Pro. I'm often annoyed with overly use-case-specific apps, as they do not have good flexibility in interacting with the data they use. It seems like many use-case-specific apps would be better suited as templates in a generic database UI tool.
Chris Granger's Eve is also tackling the database UI problem, and they are investigating wider-scoped UI patterns, beyond spreadsheets.