SQL is a beautiful language, indeed. Writing vendor-specific SQL in stored procedures and views is great. But embedding SQL in other languages such as Java is s

SQL is a beautiful language, indeed. Writing vendor-specific SQL in stored procedures and views is great. But embedding SQL in other languages such as Java is still very hard in 2013. jOOQ is the first and only API to fully embed the SQL language as an internal domain-specific language in Java, using an internal BNF for API definition: http://blog.jooq.org/2012/01/19/jooqs-fluent-api-in-bnf-notation http://blog.jooq.org/2012/01/19/jooqs-fluent-api-in-bnf-nota... Being a DSL with an AST, advanced SQL transformation can be implemented to standardise SQL where common SQL constructs aren't supported. These include: - DISTINCT predicate: http://blog.jooq.org/2012/09/21/the-is-distinct-from-predicate http://blog.jooq.org/2012/09/21/the-is-distinct-from-predica... - Row value expression predicates: http://blog.jooq.org/2013/05/03/sql-query-transformation-fun-predicates-with-row-value-expressions http://blog.jooq.org/2013/05/03/sql-query-transformation-fun... - Derived column lists: http://blog.jooq.org/2013/01/07/simulating-the-sql-standard http://blog.jooq.org/2013/01/07/simulating-the-sql-standard Both vendor-specific SQL and embedded SQL have their merits.