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>This kind of "magic" isn't always clear when programmers are mostly used to working with data structures and procedural code. My problem is that it is like so

by treis 7y ago

>This kind of "magic" isn't always clear when programmers are mostly used to working with data structures and procedural code. My problem is that it is like some sort of black magic to me. If I write a complex query I have no idea if what is spit back to me is actually what I want. The only way is seeding lots of records and then manually checking that each filter and calculation is doing what I want. In code complex things can be broken down into more simple items. Then I can reason about and test those building blocks into something I understand and am confident that is working as intended.

frosted-flakes 7y ago
Yes, SQL's biggest fault is that it's not very composable. Complex queries end up being long and repetitive, and the order of the parts of a query is totally unintuitive (it should go something like: FROM, GROUP BY, SELECT, ORDER BY rather than SELECT, FROM, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, which makes autocompletion hard).
- takeda 7y ago
  QUEL[1] was like that, but thanks to Oracle SQL won. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUEL_query_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUEL_query_languages
  - setr 7y ago
    One thing I never understood is that the SQL language, and its alternatives, share the same theoretical IR -- the relational algebra -- it shouldn't be that difficult to implement for postgres/mysql alternative relational languages like QUEL or Datalog. Or even just a simplified SQL with a sane, consistent syntax. I know PG has a bunch of procedural-language alternatives, but afaik, no relational-language alternatives. At the same time, I'd also expect it to not be that difficult to transpile from say mysql to postgres, yet there's very little in that space, at least in open source (there is however many ORMS that map to either mysql or postgres..) Both of which, amongst the procedural-languages, you'd find a hundred transpilers (JS->C) and VM-languages (Clojure,Scala,etc on jvm) implemented even by bored/curious students. Which makes my suspicion that there's no technical blocker, just a cultural one. That is, QUEL losing to SQL, such that you can't find any implementation, is an absurd concept -- it should be available on postgres (perhaps requiring some special starting keyword) -- but somehow it is not.
    - mulmen 7y ago
      The original query language for Postgres95 was QUEL. libpq refers to PostQUEL. Ingres became Post-Ingres which became POSTGRES which became Postgres95 which became PostgreSQL. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/history.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/history.html
- ratww 7y ago
  CTEs can help a bit with composition (and readability)

by treis 7y ago

frosted-flakes 7y ago

Yes, SQL's biggest fault is that it's not very composable. Complex queries end up being long and repetitive, and the order of the parts of a query is totally unintuitive (it should go something like: FROM, GROUP BY, SELECT, ORDER BY rather than SELECT, FROM, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, which makes autocompletion hard).

takeda 7y ago
QUEL[1] was like that, but thanks to Oracle SQL won. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUEL_query_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUEL_query_languages
- setr 7y ago
  One thing I never understood is that the SQL language, and its alternatives, share the same theoretical IR -- the relational algebra -- it shouldn't be that difficult to implement for postgres/mysql alternative relational languages like QUEL or Datalog. Or even just a simplified SQL with a sane, consistent syntax. I know PG has a bunch of procedural-language alternatives, but afaik, no relational-language alternatives. At the same time, I'd also expect it to not be that difficult to transpile from say mysql to postgres, yet there's very little in that space, at least in open source (there is however many ORMS that map to either mysql or postgres..) Both of which, amongst the procedural-languages, you'd find a hundred transpilers (JS->C) and VM-languages (Clojure,Scala,etc on jvm) implemented even by bored/curious students. Which makes my suspicion that there's no technical blocker, just a cultural one. That is, QUEL losing to SQL, such that you can't find any implementation, is an absurd concept -- it should be available on postgres (perhaps requiring some special starting keyword) -- but somehow it is not.
  - mulmen 7y ago
    The original query language for Postgres95 was QUEL. libpq refers to PostQUEL. Ingres became Post-Ingres which became POSTGRES which became Postgres95 which became PostgreSQL. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/history.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/history.html
ratww 7y ago
CTEs can help a bit with composition (and readability)