A Functional Data Model and Query Language is All You Need

TL;DR

This paper introduces a functional data model and query language that aim to unify programming and querying, offering greater expressiveness and integration with existing languages, addressing many limitations of SQL.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel functional data model and query language that surpass SQL in expressiveness and seamlessly integrate with programming languages, enabling holistic optimization.

Findings

FQL is more expressive than SQL.

FQL integrates smoothly into existing programming languages.

The approach enables holistic optimization between compilers and databases.

Abstract

We propose the vision of a functional data model (FDM) and an associated functional query language (FQL). Our proposal has far-reaching consequences: we show a path to come up with a modern QL that solves (almost if not) all problems of SQL (NULL-values, impedance mismatch, SQL injection, missing querying capabilities for updates, etc.). FDM and FQL are much more expressive than the relational model and SQL. In addition, in contrast to SQL, FQL integrates smoothly into existing programming languages. In our approach both QL and PL become the "same thing", thus opening up some interesting holistic optimization opportunities between compilers and databases. In FQL, we also do not need to force application developers to switch to unfamiliar programming paradigms (like SQL or datalog): developers can stick with the abstractions provided by their programming language.