Appendix D. Tips and Tricks for Command-Line and Miscellaneous Tools

In this book we used various tools, such as the IPython notebook and Unix shell commands. We have a short list of tips, which is not meant to be exhaustive. For working with databases, I recommend the DbVisualiser software available at https://www.dbvis.com/ (retrieved January 2016). It supports all the major database products and operating systems. Also, I like to use text expanders in a desktop environment.

IPython notebooks

I explained a minimal workflow for notebooks. Also, I made simple IPython widgets, which were used throughout the book, so I will describe them here. To run the IPython notebook code, follow these steps:

1. Start the IPython notebook either with your GUI or with the following command:

   $ jupyter notebook
   

2. Run the code either cell by cell or in one run.

I made a widget that sets some of the matplotlib properties. The settings are stored in the dautil.json file in the current folder. These files should...