I used to work on an Ingres database using QUEL that did have FROM before SELECT, just with different key words. We would use something like: RANGE OF t IS t

I used to work on an Ingres database using QUEL that did have FROM before SELECT, just with different key words. We would use something like: RANGE OF t IS table RETRIEVE INTO target (t.column1, t.column2) WHERE t.condition Instead of SELECT t.column1, t.column2 FROM table t WHERE t.condition I still find the joins to be more readable: RANGE OF t1 IS table1 RANGE OF t2 IS table2 RETRIEVE INTO target (t1.column, t2.column) WHERE t1.common = t2.common