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Comment by samwillis

1 year ago

Richard Hipp, creator of SQLite, has implemented this in an experimental branch: https://sqlite.org/forum/forumpost/5f218012b6e1a9db

Worth reading the thread, there are some good insights. It looks like he will be waiting on Postgres to take the initiative on implementing this before it makes it into a release.

21 comments

samwillis

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simonw  1 year ago

That comment where he explains why he's not rushing to add new unproven SQL syntax to SQLite is fascinating:

> My goal is to keep SQLite relevant and viable through the year 2050. That's a long time from now. If I knew that standard SQL was not going to change any between now and then, I'd go ahead and make non-standard extensions that allowed for FROM-clause-first queries, as that seems like a useful extension. The problem is that standard SQL will not remain static. Probably some future version of "standard SQL" will support some kind of FROM-clause-first query format. I need to ensure that whatever SQLite supports will be compatible with the standard, whenever it drops. And the only way to do that is to support nothing until after the standard appears.

  • anitil  1 year ago

    It's so ambitious in an almost boring way, exactly the right steward for a project like this

    • maxbond  1 year ago

      Dr. Hipp is one of my heroes. He seems to labor quietly in semi obscurity for decades, and at the end of it he's produced some amazing software. I was tickled by the curfuffle over his use of a set of guidelines for living in a Christian monastery as SQLite's code of ethics for the purpose of checking a box on an RFQ (part of the fallout of the libsql fork), because he does seem like a sort of programmer monk. (For what it's worth, as an agnostic, I've read them several times and found them unobjectionable. While I think the drama was unnecessary, the libsql people are doing interesting work.)

      I choose never to meet this man and be disabused of this notion. Shine on, doctor.

      6 replies →

Blackthorn  1 year ago

FROM first would be nothing short of incredible. I can only hope that Postgres and others can find it within themselves to get together and standardize on such an extension!

  • willvarfar  1 year ago

    Yeap I didn't know DuckDB supported it already!

    Being able to do SELECT FROM WHERE in any order and allowing multiple WHEREs and AGGREGATE etc, combined with supporting trailing commas, makes copy pasting templating and reusing and code-generating SQL so much easier.

      FROM table  <-- at this point there is an implicit SELECT *
  SELECT whatever
  WHERE some_filter
  WHERE another_filter <-- this is like AND
  AGGREGATE something
  WHERE a_filter_that_is_after_grouping <-- is like HAVING
  ORDER BY ALL <-- group-by-all is great in engines that support it; want it for ordering too

    ...

  • quartesixte  1 year ago

    What exactly is the history of having FROM be the second item, and not the first? Because FROM first seems more intuitive and actually the way you write out queries.

    Really hope this takes off and gets more widespread adoption because I really want to stop doing:

      SELECT *
  FROM all_the_joins

    into

      SELECT {my statements here}
  FROM all_the_joins

bvrmn  1 year ago

It's funny how he addresses the new syntax as "from-clause-first". Like a very minor change with a low value.

  • Cthulhu_  1 year ago

    I think that's important, because a lot of concepts are presented as prohibitively complicated; for example, functional programming makes sense in my head, but if you present it as lambda calculus and write it in concise form with new operators, you lost me.