Re: [HACKERS] Postgres 9.1 - Release Theme

2010/4/1 Thom Brown <thombrown(at)gmail(dot)com>:
> On 1 April 2010 09:13, Dave Page <dpage(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
>>
>> Following a great deal of discussion, I'm pleased to announce that the
>> PostgreSQL Core team has decided that the major theme for the 9.1
>> release, due in 2011, will be 'NoSQL'.
>>
>> There is a growing trend towards NoSQL databases, with major sites
>> like Twitter and Facebook utilising them extensively. NoSQL databases
>> often include multi-master replication, clustering and failover
>> features that have long been requested in PostgresSQL, but have been
>> extremely difficult to implement with SQL which has prevented us from
>> advancing Postgree in the way that we'd like.
>>
>> To address this, the intention is to remove SQL support from
>> Postgres, and replace it with a language called 'QUEL'. This will
>> provide us with the flexibility we need to implement the features of
>> modern NoSQL databases. With no SQL support there will obviously be
>> some differences in the query syntax that must be used to access your
>> data. For example, the query:
>>
>> select (e.salary/ (e.age - 18)) as comp from employee as e where
>> e.name = "Jones"
>>
>> would be rewritten as:
>>
>> range of e is employee retrieve (comp = e.salary/ (e.age - 18)) where
>> e.name = "Jones"
>>
>> Aggregate syntax in QUEL is particularly powerful. For example, the query:
>>
>> select dept,
>>      avg(salary) as avg_salary,
>>      sum(salary) as tot_salary
>> from
>>      employees
>> group by
>>      dept
>>
>> may be written as:
>>
>> range of e is employee
>> retrieve (e.dept,
>>         avg_salary = avg(e.salary by e.dept),
>>         tot_salary = sum(e.salary by e.dept)
>> )
>>
>> Note that the grouped column can be specified for each individual
>> aggregate.
>>
>> We will be producing a comprehensive guide to the QUEL syntax to aid
>> with application migration. We appreciate the difficulty that this
>> change may cause some users, but feel we must embrace the NoSQL
>> philosophy in order to remain "The world's most advanced Open Source
>> database"
>>
>> "There's no question that, at 21 years old, the SQL standard is past its
>> prime," said core developer and standards expert Peter Eisentraut. "It's
>> time for us to switch to something fresher.  I personally would have
>> preferred XSLT, but QUEL is almost as good."
>>
>> Project committer Heikki Linnakangas added: "By replacing SQL with
>> QUEL not only will will be able to add new features to Postgres that
>> were previously too difficult, but we'll also increase user loyalty as it'll
>> be much harder for them to change to a different, SQL-based
>> database. That'll be pretty cool."
>>
>> You may also notice that without SQL, the project name is somewhat
>> misleading. To address that, the project name will be changed to
>> 'PostgreQUEL' with the 9.1 release. We expect this will also put an
>> end to the periodic debates on changing the project name.
>>
>> Dave Page
>> On behalf of the PostgreSQL Core Team
>>
>
> I prefer to dump all my data in a big text file and grep it for the information I need.

As long as you implement your own grep, that sounds about on par with
the current trends! Go for it!

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/