Connect your first database

Whether you use the setup wizard, the Studio UI, or the REST API, the connect flow is the same set of decisions running through the same services. Here is what each one is actually asking.

Pick an engine

Adminium v1 ships adapters for three engines:

Engine	Connection string
PostgreSQL	postgres://user:pass@host:5432/db?sslmode=require
MySQL / MariaDB	mysql://user:pass@host:3306/db
SQLite	sqlite:/absolute/path/to/app.db

Or skip the connection entirely and import a schema file — a pg_dump, a schema.prisma, a Rails schema.rb, and six other formats. No live database required.

The probe

Before Adminium stores anything, it connects and probes. You will see something like:

Connected — 34 ms · PostgreSQL 16.2 · read-only role

Three facts, each load-bearing:

• Latency — a sanity check that you reached the database you meant to.
• Server version — Adminium adapts introspection to what the version supports.
• Capabilities — what your role can do: canRead, canWrite, canDDL.

That last one determines what you get. A role with canRead but not canWrite produces a fully functional read-only app with a banner saying so. Adminium does not offer you a Save button that will throw.

Start read-only if you are evaluating

Point Adminium at a read-only role first. You will see exactly what it makes of your schema with no possibility of a write. Grant writes when you are convinced. Per-engine recipes are on each connect page.

The meta-store question

Adminium needs somewhere to keep its own tables — users, roles, connections, snapshots, page config, audit. That is the meta store, and it is a separate concern from your data connection.

You have three options:

1. Embedded SQLite (the default) — a file under your data directory. Fine for a laptop or an evaluation. It announces itself on boot.
2. The same database as your data, in its own schema. Convenient, and requires your role to have DDL.
3. A separate database. The right answer for production.

One rule is enforced rather than advised:

A read-only data role means the meta store must live elsewhere. Adminium refuses same-database placement in that case, with META_PLACEMENT_INVALID, at the moment both facts are known — right after the probe.

Nothing else could work: Adminium must write its own tables, and a role that cannot write cannot host them. The full decision tree: Where to put the meta store.

Why the CLI asks this first

In the Studio, the meta question comes late — the Studio is already running, so a meta store already exists and the question is about where it should live going forward. The CLI has no such luxury: nothing can be persisted, not even the connection row, until a meta store is open. So the adminium wizard resolves meta placement before it asks about your database. The read-only rule still fires at exactly the right moment; only the question’s position moves.

Choosing tables

Blank or all includes everything Adminium found. Otherwise, give it a comma-separated list — either fully-qualified (public.orders) or just the table name (orders) when it is unambiguous.

You are not locked in. Re-run adminium introspect after a schema change and the snapshot updates; if nothing changed, the checksum matches and it is a no-op:

adminium introspect --connection <id>
# Schema unchanged — kept snapshot snp_… (24 tables).

Choosing an intent

The intent shapes what gets generated:

Intent	What you get
Full admin	CRUD on everything, dashboards included
Read-only analytics	Dashboards and browsing, no writes
CRUD	Data-entry screens, minimal dashboards
Support console	Lookup-first, focused on finding one record

PII masking is on by default

Introspection classifies columns and proposes masks for anything that looks personal — emails, phone numbers, national IDs. It will tell you:

Proposed 7 PII mask override(s) — masking is on by default.

Masks are proposals you can review and change, but the default is masked, not exposed.

Next

• PostgreSQL · MySQL · SQLite
• Read-only sources & the meta database
• Improve the generated app with an LLM — optional, and there is a path that sends nothing anywhere.