4 ms·

It's been a while i'm thinking about one: A Relational General Purpose Language. Not table oriented like SQL, but more OOP/Type oriented, I'm not sure exactly

by Kuinox 5y ago

It's been a while i'm thinking about one: A Relational General Purpose Language. Not table oriented like SQL, but more OOP/Type oriented, I'm not sure exactly how I want it to be, but surely not table oriented. No concurrency or async to worry about, you write the relations (exactly like you dont worry about SQL on concurrency while writing an SQL query). Like a JIT/DB Engine, it has a runtime that analyze the data processed, and optimize further the queries. I believe it even could dynamically figure out of embarrassingly parallel problems and sent it to process on the GPU. But all of this require a lot of work ^^'.

dragonwriter 5y ago
D (the Date And Darwen one, not the Walter Bright one)? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(data_language_specification) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(data_language_specificati...
- Kuinox 5y ago
  Thanks, I didn't knew about D (I did little to no research on other languages yet). I will read it, but mind that, I said "general purpose" I don't want this to be a language used to be only used as a Database. The whole app should be written in it.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I will read it, but mind that, I said "general purpose" I don't want this to be a language used to be only used as a Database. A major point of D is to eliminate the object-relational impedance mismatch and the app language/SQL boundary by providing one language for app and database that is truly relational. That said, I think most of the implementations (other than as libraries for existing languages, which is kind of a different thing) have ecosystem problems from not being popular, so even if they are “general purpose” languages, there's probably a heavy loft for lots of common tasks compared to languages with richer ecosystems.
    - Kuinox 5y ago
      Yeah, it still looks too much like SQL to me. My idea is to make procedural looking code, but is relational all the way. I believe it's possible and would limit the issue a lot of people has with SQL/relational.
pjerem 5y ago
Isn't that LINQ ? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/concepts/linq/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-g...
- stickfigure 5y ago
  Not being familiar with LINQ, does it solve SQL's composability problems? I love SQL for what it can do, but I am constantly annoyed at how inconsistent it is and how terrible it is for generating queries via software. It feels ripe for a replacement that is semantically similar but syntactically different.
  - Kuinox 5y ago
    LINQ is a library & C# language syntax that call this library thats allow to write SQLish like query on your C# objects.
    - stickfigure 5y ago
      I'm familiar with what it does (conceptually), but what I want to know is: Is it composable? Eg if I have a query and I want to add an additional filter to it, or I have a select that I want to turn into an update, is it straightforward? SQL syntax tends to make this kind of query generation difficult (though obviously not impossible).
      - Kuinox 5y ago
        The query is composable, not the object it process (it's still a C# object). A LINQ method return an IEnemurable(this interface allow simply to read the object one per one.) You can add filters, groups, order, as much as you want, because each will return an IEnumerable (some methods return a child interface, like Order, which return an IOrderedEnumerable). Then, you consume this this enumerable, most of the time with a foreach (procedural, or LINQ style, and will consume the enumerable), where you can update the values. In the end, it's still C#: you can add side effects, where you want, even in the select, even if you shouldn't. Most of the times, "when it tends to make this kind of query difficult" you can just consume your query with a foreach, and do the rest with the procedural style.

by Kuinox 5y ago

dragonwriter 5y ago

D (the Date And Darwen one, not the Walter Bright one)? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(data_language_specification) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(data_language_specificati...

Kuinox 5y ago
Thanks, I didn't knew about D (I did little to no research on other languages yet). I will read it, but mind that, I said "general purpose" I don't want this to be a language used to be only used as a Database. The whole app should be written in it.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I will read it, but mind that, I said "general purpose" I don't want this to be a language used to be only used as a Database. A major point of D is to eliminate the object-relational impedance mismatch and the app language/SQL boundary by providing one language for app and database that is truly relational. That said, I think most of the implementations (other than as libraries for existing languages, which is kind of a different thing) have ecosystem problems from not being popular, so even if they are “general purpose” languages, there's probably a heavy loft for lots of common tasks compared to languages with richer ecosystems.
  - Kuinox 5y ago
    Yeah, it still looks too much like SQL to me. My idea is to make procedural looking code, but is relational all the way. I believe it's possible and would limit the issue a lot of people has with SQL/relational.

pjerem 5y ago

Isn't that LINQ ? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/concepts/linq/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-g...

stickfigure 5y ago
Not being familiar with LINQ, does it solve SQL's composability problems? I love SQL for what it can do, but I am constantly annoyed at how inconsistent it is and how terrible it is for generating queries via software. It feels ripe for a replacement that is semantically similar but syntactically different.
- Kuinox 5y ago
  LINQ is a library & C# language syntax that call this library thats allow to write SQLish like query on your C# objects.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    I'm familiar with what it does (conceptually), but what I want to know is: Is it composable? Eg if I have a query and I want to add an additional filter to it, or I have a select that I want to turn into an update, is it straightforward? SQL syntax tends to make this kind of query generation difficult (though obviously not impossible).
    - Kuinox 5y ago
      The query is composable, not the object it process (it's still a C# object). A LINQ method return an IEnemurable(this interface allow simply to read the object one per one.) You can add filters, groups, order, as much as you want, because each will return an IEnumerable (some methods return a child interface, like Order, which return an IOrderedEnumerable). Then, you consume this this enumerable, most of the time with a foreach (procedural, or LINQ style, and will consume the enumerable), where you can update the values. In the end, it's still C#: you can add side effects, where you want, even in the select, even if you shouldn't. Most of the times, "when it tends to make this kind of query difficult" you can just consume your query with a foreach, and do the rest with the procedural style.