GoKawiilUCLA researchers build toy version of new query language Prela
Researchers at UCLA's RePL lab are developing Prela, a query language that replaces SQL's multi-column tables with simple binary relations of just two columns. A tutorial shows how a wide table, such as one listing movie IDs, titles and years, can be broken into three binary relations, each pairing a row number with a single column's value, and demonstrates a movie-search query that takes 11 lines in Prela versus more than 20 in equivalent SQL.
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By reducing every table to binary relations, Prela treats data structures more like mathematical functions, which are easier to compose and reason about than SQL's rigid multi-column schemas. If the approach scales beyond toy examples, it could lead to noticeably shorter, more composable queries for complex data relationships that currently require verbose joins in SQL.
- Prela is an experimental query language from UCLA's RePL research group.
- It uses only binary (two-column) relations, decomposing wide tables into simpler row-value pairs.
- A sample movie query in Prela runs in 11 lines versus over 20 lines in equivalent SQL.
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Published there as: “A better SQL in 11 lines of code”
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