TablaM: A relational language
IN EXPERIMENTAL STAGE. NOT USE FOR REAL WORK
TablaM is an in-progress programming language to provide a more ergonomic experience for building data-oriented applications.
This means that were most languages are focused on low-level details or engineering at large, TablaM is tailored with some small & big design decisions to make it enjoyable to write applications for e-commerce, finance, ERPs, and similars.
The most distinctive feature of the language is the use of the relational model as the base for its operation. This allows us to provide a set of universal and consistent operations that make it easier to manipulate data.
For example, where most languages have different methods to "query" items (sometimes called find, other times get or search or filter or ...), meaning you need to learn all different ways that change according to the context or kind of value you are using, in TablaM is just ?where, and ALL values, even files, databases, sockets, values, numbers, text, etc... can be queried with the same set of operators. And you don't need to code them, because are universally available.
A small taste of the language:
-- A column, aka: Vectors...
let qty := [10.5, 4.0, 3.0]
-- Like APL/kdb+ operations apply to more than scalars
prices * 16.0
-- The ? (query) operator allow to do SQL-like queries to anything
let doubled := qty ?select #0 * 2.0
let products := open("products.csv")
-- like files!
for p in products ?where #price > 0.0 do
print(p)
end
--so, we can do joins between anything:
for p in cross(products, qty) ?limit 10 do
print(p.products.price * p.qty)
end
So, what kind of language is TablaM?
Note: Items marked (tbd) are in the roadmap...
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Build on the high-performance Rust language.
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Available to major 64-bit platforms (Linux, Windows, MacOS, iOS (tbd), Android (tbd)).
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Multi-paradigm, but strongly based on the relational model. Also provide functional, imperative capabilities.
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Immutable values are the default, but allow mutable ones.
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Null safe.
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Provide decimal math as the default, instead of binary floating-point, making it better for business applications.
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Provide Algebraic Data Types (tbd).
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Provide SQL/LINQ-like experience across any relation. Like other languages say "anything is an object", in TablaM, "anything is a relation".
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Built-in support for a variety of protocols, formats, and data transformation (tbd).
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No needs for ORMs. Talk directly to major RDBMS/SQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySql, SQL Server, SQLite) (tbd).