[Developers] MQL Lite (was newbie: simple question)

[R. Pito Salas]

Shawn

Maybe MQL Lite is not something different, just a simpler way to  
describe what's there. A full SQL manual takes many pages too, but you  
can live a good life in sql knowing a tiny subset of that. The MQL  
'cheatsheet' is 2 pages of very small type, for example.

It could be that my confusion came from not knowing the basics of  
types, properties, and all the other core ideas.

Another thing that often is very thoughtful collection of specific,  
annotated examples designed to teach MQL.

Take your example:

> {"capital":null, "type":"/location/country", "name":"Peru"}

Can you tease that apart? What's with the 'null? What's with the  
"type":" "/location/country"? So annotating the examples are also a  
good pedagogical tool.

Do we know what the most common queries are that people may want to  
do? Or are things too new to know? For one thing I bet there are far  
more people who want to read than who want to write so off the bat  
writing could be left out of MQL Lite.

-- Pito


On Feb 26, 2009, at 1:29 PM, Shawn Simister wrote:

> Pito Salas wrote:
>> MQL is crazy complex though; anyone consider creating an MQL-lite?
>> Yeah I realize the complexity is probably justified so as to be
>> completely general and not assume anything, but it creates a major
>> barrier to use IMO.
>>
> Pito,
>
> I dunno if I'd say MQL is really that complex. It takes some time to  
> get used to the JSON structure of the queries when you're used to  
> writing SELECT queries but once you get the hang of that I find it's  
> actually pretty straight-forward. There is very little mandatory  
> syntax is MQL so a query can be as simple as:
>
> {"capital":null, "type":"/location/country", "name":"Peru"}
>
> For me, the hardest part is getting to know all the commons data  
> types and which types/properties to use for which queries. Usually  
> the best way to do that is to look up a couple sample topics in  
> Freebase and see which schema it uses, then you can click through to  
> the schema to find the property IDs.
>
> For the sake of argument, I'm sure it would be possible to write  
> some wrapper code to query Freebase with a more traditional SELECT  
> query syntax but the challenge of knowing which properties to use  
> would still be there and as you said, more complex queries might not  
> be possible.
>
> SELECT capital FROM /location/country WHERE name = 'Peru';
>
> What features would you look for in MQL Lite? What are the parts of  
> MQL that you find the hardest to learn as a beginner?
>
> Shawn
> _______________________________________________
> Developers mailing list
> Developers at freebase.com
> http://lists.freebase.com/mailman/listinfo/developers

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.freebase.com/pipermail/developers/attachments/20090226/4525943a/attachment.htm