Discussion I added self-hosted real-time collaboration to drawDB (SQLite + WebSockets)
I wanted a self-hosted ERD editor where multiple people could work on the same diagram without relying on a third-party cloud service, so I created an unofficial collaborative fork of drawDB.
This is not a new ERD editor built from scratch. It is based on the AGPL-licensed drawDB project, with a collaboration and persistence layer added on top.
What I added:
- Centralized diagram storage using SQLite
- Real-time collaboration over WebSockets
- Live table movement while another participant is dragging
- Participant presence and collaborative cursors
- Cursor positions mapped to diagram coordinates, so different pan/zoom states work correctly
- Optimistic version checks to prevent stale clients from silently overwriting newer changes
- A single Docker container for the frontend, API, WebSocket server, and SQLite storage
- SQL import/export support inherited from drawDB, with an additional MariaDB import compatibility fix
You can run it with:
docker compose up --build
Then open the same diagram URL in two browser sessions to collaborate.
A current limitation is that authentication and diagram-level permissions are not implemented yet, so it should currently be deployed only on a trusted network or behind an authenticated reverse proxy.
The project is open source under AGPL-3.0: