Rethinking Database Programming • Hacker News Board

Re: Rethinking Database Programming

#161

Post by huahaiy » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 12:46 AM UTC

schaefer wrote: post #121

huahaiy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is older than C. It is based on COBOL era idea of structured English as a computer language. There are better alternatives, e.g. Datalog.

I'm curious if you've personally used datalog in any projects. I've written some prolog, but haven't ever worked with datalog. Minigraph looks promising for some introductory goofing around.

I am the author of Datalevin, a Datalog database. In addition to using it in production personally, I am aware of other people using it. So, the answer is yes.

Re: Rethinking Database Programming

#162

Post by huahaiy » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 12:49 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #117

huahaiy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is older than C. It is based on COBOL era idea of structured English as a computer language. There are better alternatives, e.g. Datalog.

These kind of comments don't age well in the days of AI programming using English.

AI programming using English makes the database query language choice more important than before. Different languages require different context sizes. A better language is one requires less tokens and context.

Re: Rethinking Database Programming

#163

Post by huahaiy » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 12:54 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #118

senderista wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COBOL is indeed the spiritual predecessor of SQL. We have learned a lot since then about PL design, to put it mildly.

Yes, we now programm in straight English, and hope the machine gets it right.

So this really is a NL to query translation problem. That exactly is why the target language matters. Simpler target languages makes AI’s work easier, as it saves tokens and context, so it is less likely for AI to make mistakes.

Re: Rethinking Database Programming

#164

Post by huahaiy » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 12:56 AM UTC

packetlost wrote: post #81

huahaiy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Datalog could be a better alternative: https://datalevin.org/docs/preface

Datalog is awesome but I just don't think it's going to get mainstream adoption at this point.

Why not?

Re: Rethinking Database Programming

#165

Post by tome » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:35 AM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #134

tome wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sets and bags are trivially interconvertible so it's really not a big deal: https://h2.jaguarpaw.co.uk/posts/set-bag-irrelevance/

The point is if you're doing relational algebra you want to work with relations. The key reason why set semantics are nice is because the operations are guaranteed to return relations, so you don't have to check or make accountings of which return values are sets and which are bags, or worry about machinery to convert between the two. It's like how you can store numbers internally as floating points or rationals and…

I don't think that's actually what one wants in practice from an RDBMS, but if it really is then one can add UNIQUE to all your SQL queries and get it. SQL is not somehow lacking in that regard.

Re: Rethinking Database Programming

#166

Post by schaefer » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 12:49 PM UTC

huahaiy wrote: post #161

schaefer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if you've personally used datalog in any projects. I've written some prolog, but haven't ever worked with datalog. Minigraph looks promising for some introductory goofing around.

I am the author of Datalevin, a Datalog database. In addition to using it in production personally, I am aware of other people using it. So, the answer is yes.

Interesting! I ordered a copy of your book about Datalevin. I'll give it a try - even though I don't know Clojure.

Congratulations on release 1.0.0, and thank you for your contributions to open source.

Re: Rethinking Database Programming

#167

Post by huahaiy » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 8:07 PM UTC

schaefer wrote: post #166

huahaiy wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the author of Datalevin, a Datalog database. In addition to using it in production personally, I am aware of other people using it. So, the answer is yes.

Interesting! I ordered a copy of your book about Datalevin. I'll give it a try - even though I don't know Clojure. Congratulations on release 1.0.0, and thank you for your contributions to open source.

Thank you for the interest and support.