What is this?
Documentation for kdb+/q. MS had a posting for their new Q# language today on HN so that might have inspired someone to post this.
The Q Language
11–20 of 161 posts
Re: The Q Language
#12Notes from my KX/kdb experience: 1.) The in-memory DB .exe was around 500 KB. Imagine that. 2.) The Q language syntax, while consistent, is fairly arcane and throwback to decades past. 3.) The documentation and driver support is abysmal. 4.) It's supposedly extremely fast, but I can't help but wonder if this is a lot of successful PR and hype (like hedge fund bosses insisting on Oracle because it's the only db that '…
Seems plenty fast to me: http://tech.marksblogg.com/benchmarks.html
Re: The Q Language
#13Notes from my KX/kdb experience: 1.) The in-memory DB .exe was around 500 KB. Imagine that. 2.) The Q language syntax, while consistent, is fairly arcane and throwback to decades past. 3.) The documentation and driver support is abysmal. 4.) It's supposedly extremely fast, but I can't help but wonder if this is a lot of successful PR and hype (like hedge fund bosses insisting on Oracle because it's the only db that '…
2) I like K better (fitting the ideals of APL); I feel Q was done by Arthur to please some big client as it doesn't feel like he would choose that kind of thing (that's from reading interviews, seeing the iterations and his basic code philosophy)
Re: The Q Language
#14Imagine being French and having to explain you code in Q. (I am not certain if my comment follows HN's guidelines, apologies if I offended anyone)
The French got their revenge by giving us Coq
Re: The Q Language
#15https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/kdb+/
Another useful intro to the language
Re: The Q Language
#16... and can you use the 32bit version in commercial use? (Last I checked, no...)
The license already changed once (for the worse, IMnsHO), so what's to say that won't happen again. Too risky to touch.
No, can't use it (32bit version) for commercial, so this is a non-starter. Sorry.
kOS? really? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8475809
Re: The Q Language
#17what makes kdb so special and why isn't there an open/libre alternative?
Re: The Q Language
#18what makes kdb so special and why isn't there an open/libre alternative?
> what makes kdb so special and why isn't there an open/libre alternative?
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it seems like you expect the answer "nothing much" to the first part of your question. I have done nothing more than read lots of articles on KDB's lineage and play around a bit with J, so take my answer with a considerable lump of salt, but my impression is that the answer to the second part of your question is "because there's something 'so special' about KDB"; my understanding is that it provides blazing-fast access to memory-compact databases, from a tiny codebase, building on the APL/J legacy. Why can't this be done in an open sourced way? Well, surely there's no inherent reason, but the fact that it hasn't been is probably evidence that it's not just a problem of trivially cloning existing work (or else someone would have done it).
Re: The Q Language
#19On github kiyoto worked on this project[0] to help others understand Q code.
Re: The Q Language
#20what makes kdb so special and why isn't there an open/libre alternative?
There’s an open source impl of an earlier version of K:
There’s also a JS implementation that aims to implement K6:
http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/index.html
I don’t believe either implement all the “database” side of kdb+ though.
Edit: The J language is similar in some respects, and is GPLed. They've also got a columnar database... http://www.jsoftware.com/jdhelp/overview.html