Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

That is really fascinating, I will have a good look at that, thanks! I have a SQL parser in Haskell on github here (using Parsec): https://github.com/JakeWheat/hssqlppp

The model in the article is roughly based on the version in Date and Darwen's work which is almost the same as what you mention: project, rename, extend, join, union and not matching. The summarize by is kind of syntax sugar in this system. I left out some of the operators which weren't used anywhere in the code in the article. Industrial grade conversion from SQL to relational algebra is a real challenge!



Wow, your parser is a behemoth! My parser ended up being around 500 lines of Yacc. I know I didn't fully implement SQL, but I thought I had gotten pretty close. Are you doing any extra fancy stuff inside of the parser? Clearly the documentation is pretty extensive. I like the lhs work; I might start doing some of my projects in LHS.

SQL to RA is definitely quite a task, but it was pretty fun (up until the end, when it just started getting annoying...). Then again, I think compilers and programming languages are a blast anyway. Haskell makes it even more so :)

When I wrote this code, I wasn't really comfortable using monads, so all of the threading is explicit. If I were to revisit it, I would probably use a state monad, which might also make it easier to make it tail-recursive (as it is, my desugarer is not written in a tail-recursive manner).


The parser also does typechecking, and attempts to cover a good subset of DML, DDL and procedural SQL as well. Maybe it could be smaller!

How would you handle correlated subqueries when converting from SQL to RA?




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: