# Xata Quickstart

![Your First Steps on Xata](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87A7cSanQ3s)

Welcome to Xata! We're really happy you're here. Let's walk through your first steps on Xata by building a to-do list application. Before we do though, we'd like to invite you to our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/hUc5Mvctmt) if you'd like to throw ideas around and chat, and also let you know that if you ever need support, our [support portal](https://support.xata.io/) is the place to get it.

With that out of the way, let's get started! Begin by visiting the [Xata web user interface](https://app.xata.io) (UI). If you're not logged in, you'll be asked to login with either with GitHub or Google.

## Create

Once you're logged in, you'll be prompted to create a [workspace](/concepts/workspaces). A workspace is like an [organization on GitHub](https://docs.github.com/en/organizations), where you and your team can collaborate on your databases. Once your workspace is setup, let's create a database by clicking the "Add a database" button, and giving our new database a name and a color.



## Design

Our database is instantly ready to use, but empty. To follow our to-do list example, let's add an `items` table. To-do list items usually have a `label` and a `is_done` flag. Let's add those columns to our table. The `label` is of type **String**, and the `is_done` is of type **Boolean**.



One thing we notice while adding columns is Xata's support for **rich column types**: we don't just support `string`s, but also supersets of `string`, like `email`. If a column is of type `email`, Xata will validate it for you to ensure consistency.

Great! We've got a table ready. But in order to test it, we need some data. We can do this by clicking "Add a row" at the bottom of the table, and filling in the label of our new to-do item.



## Query

Our table is ready! Let's do a test query. To query this database, we click "Get Code Snippet". This will give us code snippets in multiple languages that we can use to query our new table.

If we choose curl, we can query our table directly from a shell environment that has it. If we choose JavaScript, we can paste the snippet directly in our browser console to test it out.

> ⚠️ This feature (Get Code Snippet) exposes a temporary API key. If you're building a production application, we suggest using a proper API key. See [API keys](/concepts/api-keys) for more information.

Great! We should be able to query our table now. How quick was that?! Next, we'll build an _actual_ application from this database using Next.js. [Let's go!](/quickstart/building-a-web-app-with-xata-and-nextjs)