R17 on spinning disk faster than PostgreSQL on SSD

Re:R17 on spinning disk faster than PostgreSQL on SSD by ck2 on Monday August 15, 2011 @11:30PM (#2889729)

Boosting speed, fantastic - replacing the completely easy and logical SQL language, not so much:

   io.file.read('users') | rel.select(username) | rel.group(count) | rel.order_by(_count);

    SELECT username, COUNT(1) AS num FROM users GROUP BY username ORDER BY num;

seriously? why?

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Re:R17 on spinning disk faster than PostgreSQL on SSD by matthewnourse on Tuesday August 16, 2011 @12:08AM (#2889842)

I hear you, and I would have preferred to use the SQL (or any other well-understood) syntax. Some of the reasons are:

1) I want the query writer to be in complete control over what happens first, rather than a query optimizer. The r17 syntax makes this explicit.

2) Similarly, I want it to be clear which things will be executed in parallel and which won't.

3) I agree that SQL is "completely easy and logical" if your query is small but for large SQL queries I find that I need to understand the query as one big mass. With r17 you can take it one clause at a time. It's a bit like a stack-based language in this respect. You can keep adding clauses at the end of a pipeline, eg WHERE (or even multiple WHEREs) can come after a GROUP BY, ORDER BY etc...contrast this with SQL's need for a special HAVING clause.

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