Requirement: hand-written queries

Users should be able to easily author queries by hand using a text
editor.

The key word in this requirement is "easily". Take a quick look at
XQuery. Obviously several people thought that it was absolutely crucial
that XQueries be encoded in XML, and quite a bit of work went into
defining the XQueryX serialization method for queries. But nobody really
uses it; it is understood that teaching people how the query language
works using this incredibly verbose syntax would do nothing but put them
off, and requiring queries to be submitted using this syntax means that
you need complex tools to author queries. Instead there is a concise,
easy-to-read, easy-to-write syntax which puts the language on par with
SQL in terms of query composition by humans.

If we don't come up with a language that is convenient for mere mortals,
then it simply won't be adopted widely.

Received on Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:40:56 UTC