You should make the first instance of “PQRL” in your readme a link to that project.
Good suggestion, thanks
Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
71–80 of 142 posts
Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#72I don't understand the need for libraries that abstract away SQL when you could just write SQL directly and have full access to the power of the language which is quite rich (recursive CTE, windowing, ... aka Modern SQL). You could also use stored procedures/functions for more complex stuff and e.g. JSON (or native types) to transfer data between the database and the application. Why limit ourselves with a sub-optima…
> Why limit ourselves with a sub-optimal language be it PRQL? Actually why limit yourself with SQL...? PRQL is a language compiled into SQL and makes certain hard-to-do things in SQL easy purely because it allows to streamline operations which SQL needs CTE joins or whatever hoop jumping to solve. My favorite example which sounds easy but isn't - select the row which is MAX(...).
> Actually why limit yourself with SQL...?
Because it's everywhere, has extensive documentation and tutorials, all database tools support it, all relational engines support it, some non-relational engines support it, all programming languages have library support for it, it can be accessed through command line tools as well as graphical interfaces, etc.
You think an industry is going to give up 50 years of infrastructure because some (typically junior) devs think the syntax is "kinda icky"?
> My favorite example which sound easy but isn't - select the row which is MAX(...).
If you look earlier in the comments you will see queries that have "DISTINCT ON" in them. It solves the problem that sounds easy, but actually is pretty easy if you know SQL.
Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#73Damn, now my bachelor's thesis will be less unique :) I'm working on a new language that compiles directly to Postgres' post-analysis structs. It's working out pretty well so far, but my chosen "universal set" (aggregation/array/subquery/... as one thing) semantics are sometimes a pain to encode.
Sounds interesting! What's the benefit of compiling directly to Postgres's internal structs over compiling to SQL?
Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#74I don't understand the need for libraries that abstract away SQL when you could just write SQL directly and have full access to the power of the language which is quite rich (recursive CTE, windowing, ... aka Modern SQL). You could also use stored procedures/functions for more complex stuff and e.g. JSON (or native types) to transfer data between the database and the application. Why limit ourselves with a sub-optima…
This comes up every time PRQL makes it onto HackerNews and is a fair question: Short answer: DX Slightly longer answer: Developer productivity and experience, especially for EDA and interactively writing complex analytical queries. Most people that have tried PRQL just find it more convenient to write their analytical queries in it. PRQL compiles to SQL so it can't express anything you can't already do in SQL, but yo…
I have a feeling this language will be more familiar to programmers who think functionally. I say this because it seems to consist of transformations applied to data and of `derive`, which defines new variables later used in other transformations.
Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#75Related:
PRQL as a DuckDB Extension - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39130736 - Jan 2024 (47 comments)
PRQL: Pipelined Relational Query Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36866861 - July 2023 (209 comments)
Calculate the Digits of Pi with DuckDB and PRQL - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35153824 - March 2023 (1 comment)
One Year of PRQL - a modern language for relational data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34690560 - Feb 2023 (1 comment)
PRQL: a simple, powerful, pipelined SQL replacement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34181319 - Dec 2022 (215 comments)
Show HN: PRQL 0.2 – a better SQL - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31897430 - June 2022 (159 comments)
PRQL – A proposal for a better SQL - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30060784 - Jan 2022 (292 comments)
Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#76I don't understand the need for libraries that abstract away SQL when you could just write SQL directly and have full access to the power of the language which is quite rich (recursive CTE, windowing, ... aka Modern SQL). You could also use stored procedures/functions for more complex stuff and e.g. JSON (or native types) to transfer data between the database and the application. Why limit ourselves with a sub-optima…
SQL is incompatible with many types of autocompletion. For example columns in a select statement are not known here you write FROM. This alone justifies PRQL in my opinion.
It's not a real problem in a practical sense. Yes, you have to write the FROM clause before autocomplete happens even though the SELECT must appear before it. Fortunately, however, text editiors used as IDEs allow for out-of-sequence code editing. You can just enter the FROM and move back to complete the SELECT.
It's like complaining that you have to know the variable name you're going to assign something to before you start writing the expression that will set the value.
int y = x * 2;
x * 2 assign to new int y;
Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#77Nice work. A few months back, I experimented with having a DSL like PRQL in Postgres, but back then, I found the language a bit cumbersome; however, it was great as an idea. IMHO, the best "data transformation" language is jq and awk is second. PRQL and EdgeQL (EdgeDB) are the most interesting ones to watch how they evolve, though. I've also written a PG extension to make jq available in Postgres [0] I believe Postgr…
Would love to see EdgeQL become adopted beyond EdgeDB. I don't like the vendor lock-in with EdgeDB, but I think they're doing great work
Yes, they are. Beyond the core database offering, I'd also like to underline the quality of their software engineering work.
There are not many Python-powered databases out there; their codebase has some real gems from the setup.py to their core compiler and Postgres-based storage layer.
Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#78Nice work. A few months back, I experimented with having a DSL like PRQL in Postgres, but back then, I found the language a bit cumbersome; however, it was great as an idea. IMHO, the best "data transformation" language is jq and awk is second. PRQL and EdgeQL (EdgeDB) are the most interesting ones to watch how they evolve, though. I've also written a PG extension to make jq available in Postgres [0] I believe Postgr…
Would love to see EdgeQL become adopted beyond EdgeDB. I don't like the vendor lock-in with EdgeDB, but I think they're doing great work
> Would love to see EdgeQL become adopted beyond EdgeDB
We'll soon be announcing some interesting developments on that front, stay tuned :)
Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#79Re: Show HN: PRQL in PostgreSQL
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How long would it take you to write the SQL for that? I don't want to appear rude, but unless I'm missing something, this is a pretty simple SQL query, of the kind anyone with mimimal SQL experience could write off the top of their head in seconds. I like the idea of PRQL, but I think a better example is needed to sell it.
I have a moderate amount of SQL experince, but I could not write that query at the top of my head. Maybe you misunderstand what the PRQL query is doing? Here's the SQL it generates: WITH table_0 AS ( SELECT , ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( PARTITION BY album_id ORDER BY milliseconds DESC ) AS _expr_0 FROM tracks ) SELECT FROM table_0 WHERE _expr_0 If I understand PRQL correctly, it finds the longest song for each album? A simpl…
It's a pretty common pattern (take the top N by group with some order), so I'd expect that it's a familiar pattern to a lot of people who regularly do analytical queries in SQL. It's clearer with formatting/naming:
WITH ranked_tracks AS (
SELECT *,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
PARTITION BY album_id
ORDER BY milliseconds DESC
) AS row_num
FROM tracks
)
SELECT *
FROM ranked_tracks
WHERE
row_num = 1
SELECT *
FROM tracks
WHERE
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
PARTITION BY album_id
ORDER BY milliseconds DESC
) = 1