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by maximilianroos
1002 days ago
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I don't know where this aggression is coming from — we're an open-source project, only volunteers, trying to do something that makes it easier for folks to work with data. Critical & constructive feedback would be really appreciated, but that's not this — why all the snark? |
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The responses from the PQRL appeared evasive to me, asking for PRs to address obvious syntax mismatches, and never answering (what I believed to be) substantive questions regarding extensibility and lowest common SQL denominators. "We don't support that yet," is a perfectly reasonable response. But what I'm seeing now is just youthful exuberance untempered by abundance of experience.
Almost anyone working intimately with DBs beyond just MySQL 5.x will know that each DB engine has features that can reduce the amount of SQL required, improve data integrity, substantially speed up operations, etc. Not allowing for escape hatches to native functionality is often a deal breaker. Does PRQL have "escape hatches" where you can use the vendor-specific keywords, operators, and types of the underlying engine? (Not just calling single-return-value function, but actual substantive syntactic differences.)
The issue of NULL is a tricky one, and I totally see why folks would want to == and != it away, but unfortunately in the SQL world, it's not just a matter of IS NULL vs IS NOT NULL (leaving aside IS [NOT] DISTINCT FROM). NULL has profound effects in the model stemming from its VERY different meaning from most programming languages. NULL means "unknown" in SQL, not just "no value" as it is in most general purpose languages. It's subtle but absolutely can't be hand-waved away. How does PRQL handle "IS DISTINCT FROM"? What about set-returning functions that were passed a NULL parameter?
Which brings me to why I think I was harsher than intended: I don't think any of you actually like SQL, and I think that's a dangerous place to start from. It leaves "weird" NULL behavior cascading through your query while the user has used == and != just as they always have with any other value. Using EXPLAIN becomes more difficult due to indirection, and it's not clear to me how you'd alter the query without hacking the PRQL engine in a one-off. I fear that it is indeed "lowest common denominator" (which these days typically means MySQL 5.x compatibility), which is (in my personal opinion) wholly unacceptable for a non-trivial data access conduit.
I'd likely have been much less snarky and supportive of PRQL if it was presented as an idea factory examining the shortcomings of SQL—of which there are many—and trying out solutions on an experimental basis.
But that isn't the tone of the project at all. Its messaging (intended or not) goes at SQL with both barrels while touting itself as a production-ready alternative standard to SQL. It isn't about "trying it out for analytics to see if it's right for your team," which I could totally get behind.
Instead, your site has statements like these:
• PRQL is a stable foundation to build on; we’re open-source and will never have a commercial product
• PRQL is a single secular standard which tools can target
A lack of commercial support isn't in any way synonymous with a stable foundation. Stability is like trust: it is earned over time through action, not just asserted to be true with good intentions. I'm not saying you can't get there eventually, but PRQL is just a year old! The project and team simply haven't earned the right to assert that yet!
https://xkcd.com/927/
All implementations are standards until they diverge. Calling PRQL a standard at this point is like the first baseball World Series where only the US played (and just white men from the US at that, but I digress). I'm not saying it can't ever be a standard, but you're skipping several steps in that process and already declaring, "Done!"
To my knowledge (and quick internet searches) there is no major standards organization behind it. Is there even more than one implementation of this standard? (Usable in multiple programming languages is not the same thing.)
I appreciate that you're volunteers and an open source project. I really do. I also appreciate that your hearts are in the right place with regard to making data accessible. But this isn't about snark. You're trying to bite off a huge chunk of a 49-year-old leviathan without recognizing how it got to be almost half a century old (in the computer industry!!!) and without noticing that massive leviathan is covered in a long lifetime of battle scars. Those are the waters you're trying to swim in (or at least seeming to from your public website messaging and source repository).
This is not just an idle piece of snark from Unix folks to any upstart that crossed their paths. It was already a large, battle-scarred leviathan as well by that point, and is far more so today!The same totally applies to SQL. Show some respect to that, keep up the good fight, but don't let hubris cloud your judgement about how far you and your team really are in this journey.
Other commenters in this discussion have noted inconsistencies in PRQL syntax. Those conversations won't get any easier by stating you'll never address them because it's "a stable foundation" or making breaking changes to make things better, thereby breaking that promise. Your project is experimental. Own it. Run with it. Improve on it. But if it's presented as more than this—as it is now—expect vehement pushback from both haters and other who honestly hold you no ill will but recognize several missing fundamentals as I have.