In real-world daily business routines, it is common that data that comes from different sources is of the same structure. Sometimes each set of data is independent and there isn’t any overlapping, like the sales data each branch office exports from their own database. Other times data overlaps heavily. In a common complete business process, it is most probably that all systems and sections input data based on their store of data. To compare the overlapped data and find and…

There is no doubt that SQL is the most widely-used working language for processing structured data. Not only is the language adopted by all relational database products, but its implementation is the goal of many newly-invented big data platforms. But in many aspects SQL isn’t so convenient to use in handling various computational and query demands. The procedurality issue stated in the last article is just a superficial one. SQL’s problems are rooted in its theory foundation, the relational…

SQL is envisioned as an English-like language. Simple SQL statements read like English sentences. SQL writes a statement in an English way with English prepositions unnecessarily attached, while other main programming languages only use English words as the mnemonic of a certain concept or operation, producing formal program statements instead of English sentences. For example, the FROM clause is the main part of a query but it is put in the end of a SQL statement, and the BY in the…

As stated in the last article, database obesity due to numerous intermediate tables and stored procedures is rooted in the closed computational system. If there is an independent computing engine providing computing capability independent of databases, then the latter can lose weight.

With a separate computing engine, the database-generated intermediate data doesn’t have to be stored as data tables; instead, it can be stored in the file system to be further computed…