SQL++ For SQL Users: A Tutorial

Does SQL have a role to play in a post-relational world? This book argues that the answer is YES. SQL++, an SQL-compatible query language developed at the University of California, San Diego, extends SQL with a few simple features that enable it to query data in the popular JSON format. The goal of SQL++ is to empower developers to create a new generation of applications, leveraging their existing SQL-based knowledge and tools. Don Chamberlin is co-inventor (with Ray Boyce) of SQL, which began as a research paper at IBM. Don has written this tutorial for developers who have a basic knowledge of SQL and wish to understand the language extensions provided by SQL++. Don explains SQL++ by a series of examples that illustrate best practices for its use. After reading this book, you will understand the advantages of storing data in JSON format, and how the familiar SELECT - FROM - WHERE - GROUP BY notation of SQL has been extended to perform queries and transformations on JSON data. The examples in this tutorial are written and tested on the open-source Couchbase platform. The book provides a link to a website where you can download everything you need to load the example data into Couchbase and run the example queries.