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The story of the past 10 years at my FAANG has been one of making our key-value databases look as much like relational databases as possible, complete with SQL
by throwyawayyyy 4y ago
The story of the past 10 years at my FAANG has been one of making our key-value databases look as much like relational databases as possible, complete with SQL query engines (at least two of them, because what would a FAANG be without multiple slightly incompatible ways of doing things?). Honestly it's been a huge boon. Should we have abandoned SQL entirely, and come up with a new language? Maybe. But given that the primary initial motivation for this work was to allow analysts to creation millions of reports without bothering eng, it had to be a language that analysts understand. That's SQL.
- wodenokoto 4y agoBigQuery? I did appreciate the SQL interface, but as poster said, thinks could be a lot better, especially for exploratory analysis.
- taf2 4y agoAre there any good libraries for exposing a SQL interface to specific languages that FAANG could open source and share making easier for more of us to do the same?
- code_biologist 4y agoTrino (nee Presto) and Hive both have open source Java SQL parsers. I'm sure their connection management code would also be really strong place to start for a full SQL server interface. That said, it almost certainly is a better idea to write a connector to something like Trino and just build on its capabilities rather than write your own SQL interface.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- isthisthingon99 4y agoViews are only useful if you will repeatedly do the same query on the same view. In this case, it sounds like the OP was saying for every pair of tables like this you have to do this big query. Still, views are free aren't they? Might as well create a view even if it is just for one query.
- fny 4y agoOP here. SQL is fine: it's powerful. It just feels like there's something missing. I don't think you need a new language, just a set of extensions or macro system to make it more DRY.
- throwyawayyyy 4y agoFair, and we do use A LOT of macros in general.