[Developers] SQL over MQL

[Scott Meyer]

John V. Sichi wrote:
> Hi Freebasers,
> 
> I work on an open source project called Eigenbase, which is an 
> extensible DBMS platform.  One of the Eigenbase extensibility features 
> is the ability to plug in a SQL/MED "foreign data wrapper" for querying 
> external data via SQL+JDBC.  This includes the ability to hook in 
> optimizer rules for transformations such as pushing down relational 
> algebra operators (e.g. filters and joins) into the external service.
> 
> After seeing Freebase ninjas and pirates last year at OSCON, I've been 
> meaning to write an MQL wrapper, and I finally got around to starting 
> one.  There's a brief HOWTO here with download links:
> 
> http://pub.eigenbase.org/wiki/FarragoMedMqlPlugin
> 
> It's just a proof of concept at this point, but if there's interest, it 
> wouldn't be difficult to enhance it to meet the requirements of 
> real-world use cases.

That's fantastic!  We've kicked around the idea here at Metaweb but
no one's had the time to do anything about it.

It looks like you're mapping types directly to tables.  Do you map
SQL joins into MQL or are you doing the joins in the client?

-Scott