[airhadoken]

I don't necessarily agree with his claim that SQL or anything like SQL is unnecessary. While SQL is wordy and oftentimes clunky, it is language-neutral, works predictably across all systems accessing the same database, and doesn't tie the application developer to object-centric (not necessarily OO but leading there) design. It seems like Stonebraker is advocating Ruby here because of the hibernation features native to Rails, which is object-centric as it ties classes defined in the application to database tables. It's a sensible abstraction on top of the loose link between applications and DBs for some applications, but e.g. extract-transform-load applications would be hindered by this abstraction more than helped.

By contrast, I think one thing that DBMSs could make steps towards obviating is explicit optimizations. Instead, there should be support in the language for telling the DBMS what's important when you do your DDL, then let it figure out indexing, reclamation, replication, and batch scheduling. I see this as being a similar optimization to GC -- the runtime performance will initially be in doubt, but it will ultimately enable the creation of complex systems with far less human effort.