Pre-West Prep: Fumiko Hanreich

March 30, 2015

Talk: HoneySQL: SQL Queries as Clojure Data Structures

Fumiko Hanreich's talk at Clojure/West is about HoneySQL, a Clojure DSL for representing SQL queries.

Background

People in the Clojure community talk a lot about representing things as data. This is an approach inherited from its Lisp forebears. HoneySQL is a data-oriented DSL that represents SQL queries. You build up SQL statements in a structured form, not string concatenation.

HoneySQL is a good example of a case where the Clojure philosophy allows for a solution to an existing problem. The problem is that SQL is designed as a human-facing language. That's fine by itself, but it is not a good language for composing pieces of a query into a larger query--the kind of things a program would do. HoneySQL provides an intermediate representation that is way more amenable to manipulation. In a way, it does the same thing for SQL as Lisp s-expressions did for code.

About Fumiko Hanreich

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This post is one of a series called Pre-West Prep, which is also published by email. It's all about getting ready for the upcoming Clojure/West, organized by Cognitect. Conferences are ongoing conversations and explorations. Speakers discuss trends, best practices, and the future by drawing on the rich context built up in past conferences and other media.

That rich context is what Pre-West Prep is about. I want to enhance everyone's experience at the conference by surfacing that context. With just a little homework, we can be better prepared to understand and enjoy the talks and the hallway conversations.

Clojure/West is a conference organized and hosted by Cognitect. This information is in no way official. It is not sponsored by nor affiliated with Clojure/West or Cognitect. It is simply me (and helpers) curating and organizing public information about the conference.