My understanding of what Slick offers over something like Squeryl (which I admit I don't know super well so correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's queries can be

My understanding of what Slick offers over something like Squeryl (which I admit I don't know super well so correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's queries can be generalized over many different data stores and is not just limited to SQL. This is why there are plans to release other backends in the future, such as MongoDB. It is able to accomplish this by constructing queries through monadic composition[1]. This an idea that has already been shown to be fairly successful with Microsoft's LINQ[2]. [1]http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/4/106584-a-co-relational-model-of-data-for-large-shared-data-banks/fulltext http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/4/106584-a-co-relational-... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query EDIT: clarity