Re: [HACKERS] Postgres 9.1 - Release Theme

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.

Thom