Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#11

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:28 PM UTC

kreetx wrote: post #6

datadrivenangel wrote: post #2

SELECT ... FROM ... is more natural for smaller SQL. When you get 1000 line SQL files or 100s of SQL files, code management pain makes you yearn for FROM ... SELECT ... (three cheers for data build tool!)

How about `table.attribute` entirely, instead of `SELECT attribute FROM table`?

You need some way to put an alias on tables so you can join a table more than once though I guess that can be optional, say

   SELECT table.attribute

or

   FROM table SELECT attribute

or

   FROM table as a,table as b WHERE a.x=b.y SELECT a.z

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#12

Post by x2bool » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:29 PM UTC

Yes, it should.

Before you know what you can SELECT you should know FROM where does the data come.

Except maybe cases where there is no data source: SELECT 1; or SELECT NOW();

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#13

Post by ht85 » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

If you ever need column name autocomplete, writing an UPDATE statement and changing it after is an ok workaround.

It would probably be a tough change to push through for the standard committee... a great one for users though, even if it takes 10+ years until you can use it in production.

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#14

Post by lieuwex » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

cmdlineluser wrote: post #4

DuckDB does this. https://duckdb.org/2023/08/23/even-friendlier-sql.html#from-...

> This addresses one of the longest standing complaints about SQL, and the DuckDB team implemented it in 2 days.

what a weird thing to say.

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#15

Post by bigfudge » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:32 PM UTC

doubled112 wrote: post #9

lupire wrote: post #5

"The syntax is meant to resemble English", obviously. The link to https://www.lib.umn.edu/collections/special?id=291 is dead, though?

"Select green apples from the refrigerator" vs "from the refrigerator, select green apples" The first is much more naturally spoken.

In English. I think other languages would have different word orderings. German for one, and I think maybe Russian too.

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#16

Post by Grazester » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:33 PM UTC

I would like coffee from Starbucks.

I don't say, from Starbucks I would like coffee

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#17

Post by MightyBuzzard » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:33 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#18

Post by derhuerst » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

PRQL [1] is a compile-to-SQL relational querying language that puts FROM first.

[1] https://prql-lang.org

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#19

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:34 PM UTC

Azure query language's Kusto, lously based on a mix of F# and SQL, does it, as does LINQ.

I end up always starting with the generic form select * from db, and then go from there, as code completion then works if there is at least one db.

Re: Shouldn't FROM come before SELECT in SQL? (2011)

#20

Post by marcosdumay » Thu, Jan 25, 2024, 2:35 PM UTC

nivertech wrote: post #10

Also SELECT should be the last clause (at least for row-oriented DBMS, for columnar databases it might come before WHERE, GROUP BY, ORDER BY to hint which columns we want to select to query on). Row-oriented: FROM table_name WHERE condition GROUP BY ... HAVING ... ORDER BY ... SELECT column1, column2, ...; Columnar: FROM table_name SELECT column1, column2, ... ORDER BY ... WHERE condition GROUP BY ... HAVING ...;

Nah, in the row one, it should come before the order by.

Alternatively, its semantics could change to reflect this ordering, but it would loss expressiveness.