Ebay launches query language

jurre wrote: post #3

charliesome wrote: post #2

Site's down for me

For me too now, theres some info on their github page: https://github.com/ql-io/ql.io

Ah, thanks for the github link. It looks like an interesting project although I'm not sure what it brings over a more 'traditional' approach to API consumption

Re: Ebay launches query language

#5

Post by jurre » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 10:22 PM UTC

charliesome wrote: post #4

jurre wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me too now, theres some info on their github page: https://github.com/ql-io/ql.io

Ah, thanks for the github link. It looks like an interesting project although I'm not sure what it brings over a more 'traditional' approach to API consumption

What I got from their website earlier is that it's meant to reduce the number of API requests by bundling multiple datarequests, giving you better performance.

Re: Ebay launches query language

#6

Post by mjs » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 10:46 PM UTC

Ah, looks like this is the library Subbu Allamaraju refers to at http://www.subbu.org/blog/2011/11/apis-are-a-pain--the aim of ql.io is to alleviate the challenges of "aggregation, parallelization, and orchestration of forks and joins." (i.e. in practice, "consistent RESTful APIs don’t matter as much as we think," nice though they may be.)

Re: Ebay launches query language

#7

Post by mjs » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 10:52 PM UTC

Interesting, another use of a SQL-like language as the query language for a data store that's definitely not an SQL database. (YQL is another example.) I really don't understand why ORMs always seem to want to create their an object-based query language--SQL is just fine for querying.

Re: Ebay launches query language

#8

Post by simonw » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 10:57 PM UTC

jurre wrote: post #3

charliesome wrote: post #2

Site's down for me

For me too now, theres some info on their github page: https://github.com/ql-io/ql.io

At first glance, it looks a bit like a host-your-own alternative to Yahoo!'s YQL, written in Node.js

Re: Ebay launches query language

#9

Post by itmag » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 11:03 PM UTC

Interesting. Isn't this the metalinguistic paradigm in action? Ie instead of creating a library/API you create a whole new Domain-Specific Language.

Thoughts on this? Is there room for innovation in APIs via DSLs?

Re: Ebay launches query language

#10

Post by itmag » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 11:20 PM UTC

itmag wrote: post #9

Interesting. Isn't this the metalinguistic paradigm in action? Ie instead of creating a library/API you create a whole new Domain-Specific Language. Thoughts on this? Is there room for innovation in APIs via DSLs?

It would be cool if there was some kind of meta-DSL which allowed you to create your own DSL. That way, more developers could go that route without having to learn all the intricacies of compiler theory and stuff like that.

I am imagining DSLs being useful both on the server side and the client side. For the former, imagine sending off a single query instead of doing a bunch of different API calls. For the latter, well, JQuery is an existing example of a popular client-side DSL (technically it's not, but it feels that way).