undefined | Better HN

0 pointsJustsignedup3y ago0 comments

This is an accurate description of how I think of this problem. And it would be tough to describe all this:

- table a joins b yay a view

- table b joins c yay a view

- table c join d yay a view

- table a joins to d. well technically it can, but are you really gonna write all the permutations of views for every possible join?

ORMs encode that nicely so I can easily walk the relationships and get to the query I need.

0 comments

dragonwriter3y ago

Essentially all of the actual information is encoded in the foreign key constraints (in combination with uniqueness constraints.) What ORMs provide that SQL doesn’t isn’t much encoding of information (they usually have facilities to distinguish data tables from pure join tables, and to distinguish 1:1 and 1:M, (M>0) relations from 1:(0-1) and 1:M, (M>=0) ones, so they do encode some additional information), but provide convenient syntactic shorthands for the client to use the encoded relationships.

This would be easy to add to SQL, as syntax sugar, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34587412

JustsignedupOP3y ago

To be completely honest, I forgot who was it, but about a year or 2 ago someone posted about a sql alternative language. The goal was to be adaptable to be used in all sql application, but a better designed language so that things like a calculation in a select can be reused in another select column, and better structure to make things easily reusable or composable, etc.

Just a new language to replace sql, that is still sql but just better designed with the benefit of 30+ years of language design improvements.

zX41ZdbW3y ago

There were countless attempts to extend or replace SQL:

OQL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Query_Language UnQL: https://www.dataversity.net/unql-a-standardized-query-langua...

More modern:

PRQL: https://prql-lang.org/ Malloy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30053860 (it is so obscure that Google replaces it to "Malay language")

Another example: ClickHouse supports standard SQL with many features such as window functions, SQL/JSON, and extends it to make it convenient for data analysts by adding: - higher-order functions; nested data structures, arrays, tuples, and maps; aggregate function states as first-class citizens, unrestricted usage of aliases in any place of expression, etc.

https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse/

I'm an everyday user of ClickHouse, and I'm finding its SQL implementation the most pleasant to use! Although it's unsurprising, because I'm also one of its authors... I'm also welcoming innovation and improvement of SQL without the introduction of a completely different language.

2 more replies

ntonozzi3y ago

Was it PRQL? That’s what all of these comments remind me of.

https://prql-lang.org/

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse