Pumped-up beta of Blist’s online database goes public

Blist marks the start of the public beta test of its online, spreadsheet-like SQL database this week with a battery of new features designed to foster a community around online data.

Blist’s Excel-inspired, Flash-based Web GUI is designed to appeal to users who know little about relational databases. One key new feature is to let users who’ve been relying on Excel spreadsheets for data management to import that data directly into a basic Blist form. Another addition is the ability for several online users to work together on a Blist database at the same time.

Blist was unveiled Jan. 28 at Network World’s DEMO 08, a showcase for new technology products and companies. (A video of Blist’s presentation is available on Demo.com.) It’s an online service, built on the established open source PostgreSQL database engine for the data that are the traditional domain for a relational database management system, coupled with a highly scalable distributed file system for documents and other stuff that won’t “fit” into the RDBMS. The Blist database stores a bunch of metadata about these external files so they can be found and manipulated quickly.

During the limited beta testing after that release, the online data sets were small because users had to create them manually. That changed almost overnight with the release of the Excel import feature, which lets Blist accept the CSV (comma-separated variables) file format used by Excel and other programs. “With this import, the data sets jumped [to be] much larger,” says Kevin Merritt, CEO for the startup. “We had one person try to upload 2 million rows [from an Excel spreadsheet]. It took him about 45 minutes.”

The new multi-user editor is one of several steps designed to make Blist what Merritt calls an “online social database.” For example, another new feature is a way to find and use already-created Blist data models so you don’t have to create your own every time from scratch. “You can start a blist, import data into it with CSV, and then browse the [row-and-column] data structures in other existing blists,” Merritt says. When you find a set of rows and columns similar to what you want, you click a button to copy into your blist that grid structure, with the column names from the other blist, to start organizing your data. If the data in the other blist has been labeled “public” by its owner, you can import it along with the grid.

“It overcomes the blank page problem of ‘where do I begin?'” Merritt says.

Also new is a toolbar icon called “dashboard” that will become the default starting point for Blist users in the next couple of weeks. Merritt likens it to a newsfeed on Facebook: Dashboard lets you see what people are doing on the Blist site. A “profile” feature now lets Blist users describe themselves and their interests and list the blists they’ve created.

Traditionally, databases are focused on an individual or a single organization, Merritt says. “There’s no way to create a community around data,” he says. “This summer, we’ll introduce a way to publish and subscribe to data from other members of the Blist community.”

The company is on track to make Blist generally available in late April or early May. When that happens, the company will also release details on how it will price the service.