I’d like to point out that sum types would be great. (Sum types let you have any of two or more different types in one value)
For example, I could work around the issues with NULL by defining an enumeration type with values like MISSING, UNKNOWN, INVALID, … and then I can have a column that is a sum of that type with the type we normally keep in the column. We would need some machinery to declare how aggregates work, but I think that’s very much in the spirit of how types work in Postgres now. In general, I would think we could make SQL a better functional programming language by just implementing good fp features like this. On Feb 10, 2022, 11:09 -0800, Merlin Moncure <mmonc...@gmail.com>, wrote: > On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 10:54 AM Merlin Moncure <mmonc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 11:15 PM Guyren Howe <guy...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > • Also nested function definitions, so top-level functions can be > > > > > built out of local auxiliary functions. > > > > > • Other languages > > > > > • Tutorial D, Datalog, Quell, let’s open this puppy up! > > > > > • SQL is a terrible, no good, very bad language > > > > > > > > > Postgres used to suport QUEL way back in the day. Being blunt, there > > > > is zero chance of this happening in core. A query language translator > > > > out of core, preprocessing the language into SQL, might work. SQL has > > > > evolved far beyond what those languages could practically offer. Main > > > > benefit here would be to better support relational division, which > > > > bizarrely has yet to arrive in SQL. > > > > A portable, low-level API > > > > FYI, there was a semi-serious commercial attempt to do this back in 2001, > > Dataphor. It's been opensourced. Wikipedia has a pretty good write up on > > it: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataphor > > > > IMNSHO suggestions like these should travel this technical path; take the > > data language you want and translate it into SQL. Some of these > > translations will end up being complicated (read: slow). Iterating this > > kind of thing outside of core would allow for faster development. > > > > merlin
