Syntactically PRQL is much simpler, cleaner and more flexible. You simply chain pipeline stages instead of having a single monolithic query statement.
Data model wise EdgeQL is close to what I want (links instead of joins, optionality instead of null, nesting support), but it's syntax is almost as bad as SQL.
I just wish they had mutation in there too. I don't like the idea of swapping between PRQL and SQL, let alone some complex update statements where i'd rather write the query in PRQL. .. Yea you could argue they shouldn't be that complex for updates though heh.
I haven't thought about DML too much but what I could envision is an approach like the Elm or React architecture where you specify a new state for a table as a PRQL query and then the compiler computes the diff and issues an efficient update.
For example
DELETE FROM table_name WHERE id = 1;
table_name = from table_name | filter id != 1
INSERT INTO table_name (id, name) VALUES (1, 'Jane');
table_name = from table_name | append [{id=1, name='Jane'}]
SQL:
UPDATE table_name SET name = 'John' WHERE id = 1;
Any ideas?
The writing SQL experience is a product of both SQL's syntax, the structure of the database you're querying over and the complexity of your query.
When things get hairy, and you have a good number of representative queries already written that you can use as context, LLMs can be really nice tool.