My first reaction to seeing an SQL-based API is 'ugh'. SQL is complex and a little cumbersome, and easy to get wrong. My second reaction is 'oh, thank god'. I'

My first reaction to seeing an SQL-based API is 'ugh'. SQL is complex and a little cumbersome, and easy to get wrong. My second reaction is 'oh, thank god'. I'm so tired of having APIs where I have to go through the 'get the list of users', 'iterate over the list to create a map', 'get the list of messages', 'iterate over the list of messages and add the username to the data structure', 'oh wait I have to get the channel list separately too, seriously?', 'get the list of channels', 'iterate over the list to create a map', etc. I love Slack's API, for example, but having to fetch a list of users, along with the entirety of their profile data and everything about them, then do the same for channels, then do the same for messages, then tie everything together, it's very cumbersome compared to SELECT m.message, m.when, u.username, u.name, c.name FROM messages m LEFT JOIN users u ON (m.uid == u.uid) LEFT JOIN (m.cid == c.cid) where c.name == "#general" LIMIT 50; (or whatever it should be, I haven't done SQL in ages) And I also get a lot fewer records, especially when I'm trying to get the last 50 messages from #general on a Slack instance that has 400 users and 200 channels.