4 ms·

I kind of disagree; the problem with SQL is that fundamentally it's actually pretty good. So alternatives either tend to be too radical (throwing out the baby

I kind of disagree; the problem with SQL is that fundamentally it's actually pretty good. So alternatives either tend to be too radical (throwing out the baby with the bathwater) or simply not enough of an improvement to gain any momentum. I feel like rational database querying is effectively solved and there's little point in re-litigating it. But still I'd be happy to switch to the perfect replacement if someone develops it.

vkazanov 2y ago
What does "good" mean in this context? SQL is not modular, most features are highly context-dependent and there numerous handguns. Sql might be ok for trivial things, as in OLTP that programmers tend to work with. But anything even slightly more advanced is... not nice. And the standard is unique in its uselessness. The underlying relational algebra model is brilliant thought.
- rangerelf 2y ago
  > SQL is not modular, most features are highly context-dependent... Examples? > SQL might be OK for trivial things, as in OLTP... What is the threshold for triviality? I've seen understandable fairly complex queries, but they're not mind-twisters by any means; if you know what you need, and understand your data, >>and are not a layperson regarding databases<< it's doable without much sweat. > But anything even slightly more advanced is ... not nice Again, what is the threshold, or at least what is your threshold, for triviality vs. non-trivial? You say it's "unique in its uselessness" but "the underlying relational algebra model is brilliant", can you explain a bit further what you mean by that?
- wvenable 2y ago
  Good means it gets the job done in a fairly logical and readable way. SQL queries are not giant programs and shouldn't be. I've written some very advanced queries with plenty of common table expressions, subselects, etc. Could it be more modular? Sure. Could the syntax be better? Yes. But would that radically change how queries are written? Not really. The worst SQL I've ever seen is when someone attempts to program it imperatively. It takes a different mentality to write SQL then to write imperative code.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > But would that radically change how queries are written? Not really. Rust didn't radically change how applications are written as compared to C, but that didn't stop us. Nor should it. Any improvement is worthwhile. It doesn't need to be radical. But, like another commenter points out, SQL is like Javascript. Both having ecosystems so horrendously conceived that they have ensured there is no good path to replacing/augmenting them.
    - wvenable 2y ago
      Rust hasn't swept the world yet and it helps prevent real bugs and security issues. A better query language may make it fractionally easier to write database queries but you have to toss out a half-century of experience. It's not worth it for marginal gains. This isn't even opinion, this is the reason it has never happened. I think I agree that SQL is like JavaScript. If JavaScript wasn't as expressively powerful as it is, it would have been replaced a long time ago. But it's actually good enough, despite it's quirks, that there doesn't exist a language better enough to make it worth replacement. It's possible such a language might never exist. And both SQL and JavaScript continue to improve sometimes directly stealing ideas from potential competitors.
      - lenkite 2y ago
        > If JavaScript wasn't as expressively powerful as it is, it would have been replaced a long time ago. No, it wouldn't matter how terrible or in-expressive the language is - once it got rolled out to the web browser, then it would never be replaced. That is why you have WASM nowadays - you can add new stuff but never replace stuff.
        wvenable 2y ago
        I disagree. If JavaScript was objectively limited, one of the browser makers would have just added something else and if it was good enough it would spread to others. Just like other browser technologies (for example, xmlHttpRequest). In a way, that's what happens with JavaScript right now. It continues to evolve. Browsers did support multiple programming languages with the language attribute on the script tag. This is how Microsoft added VBScript to IE.
- indymike 2y ago
  All of this is true. "Being ok for trivial things... that programmers tend to work" with is precisely why SQL has won over the years. SQL has never been a great general-purpose language, but is fantastic at the things programmers tend to work with. That SQL (and associated databases) keeps getting extended to meet new data storage/retrieval problems has really helped SQL stick with us.
- theLiminator 2y ago
  Honestly for OLAP use cases, I think dataframe apis are superior.
  - metrognome 2y ago
    I gained a a few years of experience in SQL-based OLAP systems at my current job. In this time I developed a strong appreciation for SQL, especially for its composability. Recently, I started a project in Google Colab, gluing together queries from several systems with Pandas DataFrames. I can honestly say that I've never been more frustrated learning an API than I have with Pandas. Need some window function like LAG() or LEAD()? Too bad, I hope you like writing Python "for i in range(...):" loops. My notebook is littered with ".reset_index()" calls, ".replace(np.nan, None)", "axis='columns'", "foo.assign(bar=lambda df: df.apply(lambda row: ...))". groupby is especially confusing to me, as a Pandas GroupBy is difficult to compose with a normal DataFrame until you call .reset_index(). Compare this to SQL, where a subquery is a subquery, whether or not it has a GROUP BY clause. The Pandas documentation also leaves a lot to be desired. Take the documentation of pandas.NaT[1] for example. "pandas.NaT: alias of NaT". Ok? That still doesn't tell me what NaT is, nor does it link to the thing that it aliases. The groupby documentation[2] also caused me some headaches, as it covers only the simplest aggregation use-cases. Pandas is clearly better for some use-cases, but mostly for simple operations that are well-supported by the API (perhaps numeric operations that are implemented with native numpy routines). But if I'm doing some interactive OLAP stuff, I'll reach for SQL. Perhaps the problem is I'm trying to use Pandas like it's SQL, when it's not. But for manipulating data, I'd rather use a language than a library. [1] https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.NaT.html https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.NaT.html [2] https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/user_guide/groupby.html https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/user_guide/groupby.html edit: half a sentence
    - theLiminator 2y ago
      I should've specified polars, ibis, dplyr, pyspark, etc. Pandas is easily the worst dataframe api. I'll never go back to SQL from polars, it's far superior in both composability and readability imo. Not to mention complex transforms can be version controlled and unit tested, and then you can compose these together. It also maps to/from SQL quite naturally.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fbdab103 2y ago
I think the fundamental problem is that if you want to talk to databases, you have to speak SQL. Like Javascript on the web, you are stuck with what the platform provides. Both languages have significant deficiencies, yet is/was the only game in town. Sure, there are some languages which can compile down to SQL, but like Typescript, every once and a while, you find some edge case where the transpilation fails you and you might as well be an expert in SQL. I love all of the ideas of PRQL, but I do not know if I would be painting myself into a corner adopting something that will go the way of CoffeeScript.

vkazanov 2y ago

What does "good" mean in this context? SQL is not modular, most features are highly context-dependent and there numerous handguns. Sql might be ok for trivial things, as in OLTP that programmers tend to work with. But anything even slightly more advanced is... not nice. And the standard is unique in its uselessness. The underlying relational algebra model is brilliant thought.

rangerelf 2y ago
> SQL is not modular, most features are highly context-dependent... Examples? > SQL might be OK for trivial things, as in OLTP... What is the threshold for triviality? I've seen understandable fairly complex queries, but they're not mind-twisters by any means; if you know what you need, and understand your data, >>and are not a layperson regarding databases<< it's doable without much sweat. > But anything even slightly more advanced is ... not nice Again, what is the threshold, or at least what is your threshold, for triviality vs. non-trivial? You say it's "unique in its uselessness" but "the underlying relational algebra model is brilliant", can you explain a bit further what you mean by that?
wvenable 2y ago
Good means it gets the job done in a fairly logical and readable way. SQL queries are not giant programs and shouldn't be. I've written some very advanced queries with plenty of common table expressions, subselects, etc. Could it be more modular? Sure. Could the syntax be better? Yes. But would that radically change how queries are written? Not really. The worst SQL I've ever seen is when someone attempts to program it imperatively. It takes a different mentality to write SQL then to write imperative code.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > But would that radically change how queries are written? Not really. Rust didn't radically change how applications are written as compared to C, but that didn't stop us. Nor should it. Any improvement is worthwhile. It doesn't need to be radical. But, like another commenter points out, SQL is like Javascript. Both having ecosystems so horrendously conceived that they have ensured there is no good path to replacing/augmenting them.
  - wvenable 2y ago
    Rust hasn't swept the world yet and it helps prevent real bugs and security issues. A better query language may make it fractionally easier to write database queries but you have to toss out a half-century of experience. It's not worth it for marginal gains. This isn't even opinion, this is the reason it has never happened. I think I agree that SQL is like JavaScript. If JavaScript wasn't as expressively powerful as it is, it would have been replaced a long time ago. But it's actually good enough, despite it's quirks, that there doesn't exist a language better enough to make it worth replacement. It's possible such a language might never exist. And both SQL and JavaScript continue to improve sometimes directly stealing ideas from potential competitors.
    - lenkite 2y ago
      > If JavaScript wasn't as expressively powerful as it is, it would have been replaced a long time ago. No, it wouldn't matter how terrible or in-expressive the language is - once it got rolled out to the web browser, then it would never be replaced. That is why you have WASM nowadays - you can add new stuff but never replace stuff.
      - wvenable 2y ago
        I disagree. If JavaScript was objectively limited, one of the browser makers would have just added something else and if it was good enough it would spread to others. Just like other browser technologies (for example, xmlHttpRequest). In a way, that's what happens with JavaScript right now. It continues to evolve. Browsers did support multiple programming languages with the language attribute on the script tag. This is how Microsoft added VBScript to IE.
indymike 2y ago
All of this is true. "Being ok for trivial things... that programmers tend to work" with is precisely why SQL has won over the years. SQL has never been a great general-purpose language, but is fantastic at the things programmers tend to work with. That SQL (and associated databases) keeps getting extended to meet new data storage/retrieval problems has really helped SQL stick with us.
theLiminator 2y ago
Honestly for OLAP use cases, I think dataframe apis are superior.
- metrognome 2y ago
  I gained a a few years of experience in SQL-based OLAP systems at my current job. In this time I developed a strong appreciation for SQL, especially for its composability. Recently, I started a project in Google Colab, gluing together queries from several systems with Pandas DataFrames. I can honestly say that I've never been more frustrated learning an API than I have with Pandas. Need some window function like LAG() or LEAD()? Too bad, I hope you like writing Python "for i in range(...):" loops. My notebook is littered with ".reset_index()" calls, ".replace(np.nan, None)", "axis='columns'", "foo.assign(bar=lambda df: df.apply(lambda row: ...))". groupby is especially confusing to me, as a Pandas GroupBy is difficult to compose with a normal DataFrame until you call .reset_index(). Compare this to SQL, where a subquery is a subquery, whether or not it has a GROUP BY clause. The Pandas documentation also leaves a lot to be desired. Take the documentation of pandas.NaT[1] for example. "pandas.NaT: alias of NaT". Ok? That still doesn't tell me what NaT is, nor does it link to the thing that it aliases. The groupby documentation[2] also caused me some headaches, as it covers only the simplest aggregation use-cases. Pandas is clearly better for some use-cases, but mostly for simple operations that are well-supported by the API (perhaps numeric operations that are implemented with native numpy routines). But if I'm doing some interactive OLAP stuff, I'll reach for SQL. Perhaps the problem is I'm trying to use Pandas like it's SQL, when it's not. But for manipulating data, I'd rather use a language than a library. [1] https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.NaT.html https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.NaT.html [2] https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/user_guide/groupby.html https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/user_guide/groupby.html edit: half a sentence
  - theLiminator 2y ago
    I should've specified polars, ibis, dplyr, pyspark, etc. Pandas is easily the worst dataframe api. I'll never go back to SQL from polars, it's far superior in both composability and readability imo. Not to mention complex transforms can be version controlled and unit tested, and then you can compose these together. It also maps to/from SQL quite naturally.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

fbdab103 2y ago

I think the fundamental problem is that if you want to talk to databases, you have to speak SQL. Like Javascript on the web, you are stuck with what the platform provides. Both languages have significant deficiencies, yet is/was the only game in town. Sure, there are some languages which can compile down to SQL, but like Typescript, every once and a while, you find some edge case where the transpilation fails you and you might as well be an expert in SQL. I love all of the ideas of PRQL, but I do not know if I would be painting myself into a corner adopting something that will go the way of CoffeeScript.