Hacker News Reader

Comment by RobotToaster | Hacker News Reader

(my)Sql in itself can be quite powerful, although it seems it's advanced features are underused.

I wonder about going the other way, and turning SQL into a full scripting language.

> turning SQL into a full scripting language

That's what PL/SQL and T-SQL basically are. They work, but they have a somewhat weird programming model, halfway between programming and declarative sql but being neither, with table cursors and stateful SQL queries.

And of course, their scope is limited to interacting with the database itself, not the outer world.

Partial list for Postgres:

    • pl/pgsql (a pl/sql clone)
    • pl/perl 
    • pl/python 
    • pl/v8 (JS, LiveScript, and CoffeeScript)
    • pl/java
    • pl/r
    • pl/lua
    • pl/rust
    • pl/ruby
    • pl/sh
    • pl/scheme
    • pl/julia

Or at least that's where you can define arbitrary procedural/functional logic for result sets within a language oriented toward set theory and transformation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com