zetasql VS logica

There are even table-valued functions.

These things are not widespread, and differ by implementation, and the way these are used by clients are copy-and-paste. Something as thoughtful as ZetaSQL https://github.com/google/zetasql does not have mechanisms for structuring (modules, packages, interfaces). SQL will not, cannot evolve into such a direction (or, anything that evolves, will not be recognizable as SQL).

Hi, I develop a BigQuery emulator ( https://github.com/goccy/bigquery-emulator ) from early 2022. It is written in Go, but can be used from bq command line tool and other language's (e.g. Python ) client SDK after installing docker image or released binary. It currently supports over 200 of the nearly 330 standard functions in BigQuery and all data types except GEOGRAPHY ( see https://github.com/goccy/go-zetasqlite#status for details ). ZetaSQL ( https://github.com/google/zetasql ) is used to parse and analyze queries.

We are using a Python client binding for ZetaSQL GRPC local service in our application to analyze statements and extract referenced tables and output columns.

If you don't want to do it yourself, there's this:

https://github.com/google/zetasql

Parsing is huge but it's amazing how small a part of the job it is. This library isn't even the half of it.

I mean the postgres parser (and semantic changes) for ZetaSQL. The zetasql parser is in a file called zetasql/parser/bison_parser.y, I strongly suspect they now have a file called something like zetasql/pgparser/bison_parser.y as well (and much more pervasive changes to support the deeper differences in the dialects).

This is the lexical structure and syntax docs for the new postgres inteface to cloud spanner:

https://cloud.google.com/spanner/docs/postgresql/lexical

And this is the zetasql lexical structure and syntax docs:

https://github.com/google/zetasql/blob/master/docs/lexical.m...

Notice that the new PG docs are an edit of the Zeta ones - evidence that my hypothesis is correct.

zetasql implements BigQuery, Spanner, and Dataflow dialects.

If you're interested in this I would also recommend you check out Logica[0], which is a datalog-like language that is explicitly made to compile to SQL queries.

0: https://logica.dev/

> I guess the intention is to be better than SQL but then I was left with "under which circumstances?"

Excellent question.

Two of the most common use cases for databases are "transactional processing" (manipulating small numbers of rows in real time) and "analytical processing" (querying enormous numbers of rows, typically in a read-only fashion).

SQL is generally fine for transactional workloads.

But analytical queries sometimes involve multi-page queries, with lots of JOINs and CTEs. And these queries are often automatically generated.

And once you start writing actual multi-page "programs" in SQL, you may decide that it's a fairly clunky and miserable programming language. What Datalog typically buys you is a way to cleanly decompose large queries into "subroutines." And it offers a simpler syntax for many kinds of complex JOINs.

Unfortunately, there isn't really a standard dialect of Datalog, or even a particular dialect with mainstream traction. So choosing Datalog is a bit of a tradeoff: does it buy you enough, for your use case, that it's worth being a bit outside the mainstream? Maybe! But I'd love to see something like Logica gain more traction: https://logica.dev/

Interesting; a Google engineer previously published a Datalog variant for BigQuery: https://logica.dev/

This new language seems similar to differential-Datalog (which is sadly in maintenance mode): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33521561

Looks pretty cool. I'd be interested if the README had a comparison with Google's Logica (https://github.com/EvgSkv/logica)

Oh wow that is neat!

And yes, this kind of thing is why datalog is a lot more amenable to fast query plans & runtimes than prolog. This part is especially cool: https://github.com/EvgSkv/logica/blob/main/compiler/dialects...

Google new programming Language that compiles to SQL (Support BigQuery and Postgres) feels very exciting. Blog: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/04/logica-organizing-your-data-queries.html Github: https://github.com/EvgSkv/logica

Going to be? It already is. In fact, one thing the article misses is right there at the bottom of the project page: