Hacker News Reader

Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

Completely agree. For example, why isn't there functionality to define aliases for complex expressions and then reuse those through a query. Simple query-local SQL functions would be nice too.

I'd love to see a "SQL-like" language that compiles down to SQL itself, much like Babel or TypeScript in the JavaScript world. I think the tricky thing is that there is no single SQL target.

View on HN

> Completely agree. For example, why isn't there functionality to define aliases for complex expressions and then reuse those through a query. Simple query-local SQL functions would be nice too.

What about common table expressions? Or custom defined functions?

    with X as ( select... )

It's widely used for analysis

CTEs can do that, but it is quite clunky for when you just want to reuse a partial per row computation.

>functionality to define aliases for complex expressions and then reuse those through a query

What's an example of what you're trying to do? I think views, user-defined functions, routines, and select aliases would cover all the bases...

> I think the tricky thing is that there is no single SQL target.

So the jquery of SQL, then.

Multi sql targets means it’s even more of an advantage to compile

Linq

Reply on news.ycombinator.com