> could there be 1 universal language to query relational databases, text file storage (json, csv, etc), and anything else.
> Or put another way, is there any data storage format that couldn’t be queried by SQL?
We created PLDB.io (a Programming Language DataBase) and have studied nearly every language ever created and thought about this question a lot.
Yes, there could be 1 language to query everything, but there will always be a better DSL more relevant for particular kinds of data than others. It's sort of like how with a magnifying glass you can magnify anything, but if you want to look at bacteria you're going to want a microscope (and you wouldn't want a microscope to study an elephant).
Now it may turn out that there is 1 universal syntax that works best for everything (I'm sure people can guess what I would say), but I can't think of a case where you wouldn't want to have a DSL with semantics evolved to match a particular domain.
> Or put another way, is there any data storage format that couldn’t be queried by SQL?
We created PLDB.io (a Programming Language DataBase) and have studied nearly every language ever created and thought about this question a lot.
Yes, there could be 1 language to query everything, but there will always be a better DSL more relevant for particular kinds of data than others. It's sort of like how with a magnifying glass you can magnify anything, but if you want to look at bacteria you're going to want a microscope (and you wouldn't want a microscope to study an elephant).
Now it may turn out that there is 1 universal syntax that works best for everything (I'm sure people can guess what I would say), but I can't think of a case where you wouldn't want to have a DSL with semantics evolved to match a particular domain.