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Is there something better than SQL? (self.programming)

submitted 2 years ago by onlinepersona to c/programming

71 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If you're modeling relational data, it doesn't seem like you can get around using a DB that uses SQL, which to me is the worst: most programmers aren't DB experts and the SQL they output is quite often terrible.

Not to dunk on the lemmy devs, they do a good job, but they themselves know that their SQL is bad. Luckily there are community members who stepped up and are doing a great job at fixing the numerous performance issues and tuning the DB settings, but not everybody has that kind of support, nor time.

Also, the translation step from binary (program) -> text (SQL) -> binary (server), just feels quite wrong. For HTML and CSS, it's fine, but for SQL, where injection is still in the top 10 security risks, is there something better?

Yes, there are ORMs, but some languages don't have them (rust has diesel for example, which still requires you to write SQL) and it would be great to "just" have a DB with a binary protocol that makes it unnecessary to write an ORM.

Does such a thing exist? Is there something better than SQL out there?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (5 children)

SQL has been around and evolving since the 70s. It is an ISO/IEC standard and is portable across a multitude of databases.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL

[–] sip 0 points 2 years ago (4 children)

portable, my ass. excuse my french.

each system has it's own dialect and quirks

[–] lysdexic 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

each system has it’s own dialect and quirks

That does not mean that SQL, as specified by one of it's standard versions, is not portable. It just means that some implementations fail to comply with the standard and/or provide their own extensions.

If an implementation fails to comply with the standard, that's a failure on the side of the implementation, not a failure of SQL.

[–] sip 1 points 2 years ago

sure, ok, but who uses only the subset of standard SQL in a particular engine just to call his queri3s portable? most of the good stuff is unique to each engine and is what makes the engine stand out.

it's the same with C standards...

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