While it's true that solving this at the language level would be even better, it's not required. All you need is an extensible AST data model. For example, Act

While it's true that solving this at the language level would be even better, it's not required. All you need is an extensible AST data model. For example, ActiveRecord doesn't have support for window functions, but its underlying AST (a library called ARel) allows you to extend it, which at one point I did, allowing me to write something like this: things = Arel::Table.new('things') things.project(Arel::Nodes::NamedFunction.new(:sum, [things.count]).over('my_window')). window('my_window'). order(things[:name]). range(Arel::Nodes::Preceding.new) which generates something like: select sum(count(*)) over my_window from things window my_window as (order by name rows unbounded preceding) (It's been a while since I looked at this particular code, which is no longer in production use, so it might not be correct.) In other words, I could continue to express whatever I wanted of SQL, at the language level — no type mismatches. The SQL builder code isn't pretty, to be sure, but it's something you typically encapsulate into a lower-level module rather than writing in application code. And as it's highly analogous to the SQL code it generates, it's not like it's that much more complicated. (ARel isn't a shining example of how to do it right, either. I expect Diesel implements the AST aspect more cleanly.) Edit: I see what you're saying about typed record types. I was thinking more about the grammar, not the shape of the data.