On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Ian Lawrence Barwick <barwick@gmail.com> wrote:
> As a British native speaker involved in translating some PostgreSQL-related
> Japanese text, all I can say is "yes please". (Although for true Japanese
> support, the grammar would have to be pretty much reversed, with the verb
> being placed last; and WHERE would come before SELECT, which might
> challenge the parser a little).
I am personally of the opinion that whoever designed SQL was far too
concerned about making it look like English and insufficiently
concerned about making it pleasant to use. Since the target list
comes before the FROM clause, you see (or must write) what you want to
select from which table aliases before defining what those table
aliases mean. Overall, you end up with an organization where you
define the aliases in the middle, and then half the stuff that uses
those definitions is at the beginning (in the target list) while the
other half is at the end (in the WHERE clause). Strange!
But, it's a standard, so, we live with it. And, none of the query
languages I've designed have gained quite as much traction as SQL, so
who am I to complain?
>> (I don't know whether I'm joking, so don't ask.)
>
> I think I am joking.
Keep me posted as things develop. :-)
--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company