Ask HN: How do you test SQL?

Re:Ask HN: How do you test SQL? by OJFord on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @07:29PM (#34604496)

> If SQL was a declarative language, there would not be expression in it, for example SELECT (1+2) , only SELECT 3

SQL is I think generally considered not entirely declarative, but that is not an example that shows that. Is there any declarative language that satisfies that, that has no addition (or operator? Or addition of constants? I'm not really clear what about it you think makes it not declarative?).

By this rule, Prolog and HCL/Terraform are not declarative either.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you test SQL? by spamtarget on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @07:41PM (#34604615)

one way of seeing this, everything, which is high level language is declarative, but if we do this, we make this classification meaningless. it was just an example, for an operator, which is an "activity" is not part of a declarative mindset (usually). you can twist the idea of SQL to be declarative, but in this case we go back to my first sentence, and distinction will have no purpose.

i give you other angles.

imperative has structures like: sequence (by code), loops and conditions

functional

** has no loop, the loop itself the cardinality, which is always multiple

** has no sequence, it's encoded by data (edit here, actually it has)

** has (of course) condition

So, by basically we redefine the fundamental elements of the imperative model

Purely declarative languages has no sequence/loop or conditions (in programming understanding)

Answering to you, HTML (especially earlier) is pretty close to purely declarative, i does not have loops or conditions, however, this is not 100% true, but close. I don't know those languages you mentioned, so i can not have an opinion about them

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