AMI SQL

Goals

The 3Forge SQL language provides a comprehensive instruction set for working with table(s) of data.

• Retrieval - Accessing and Normalizing data from external sources
• Blending - Perform Joins and Unions on tables
• Modifying - Inserting, Updating, and Deleting rows
• Analyzing - Grouping, Sorting, and Filtering
• Schema Definition - Creating, Updating, and Dropping tables

Broadly speaking, the logic steps involved in data-visualization are:

1.       Running a query, or set of queries, on external datasources and/or the AMI-Realtime database.

- Each datasource is predefined and uniquely named.

- The results of queries on datasources will result in temporary, in-memory tables

- The queries can be constructed using user-input/user-selected/user-associated data

- In more advanced cases, the queries can be sequential, meaning the results from one query are then fed into a subsequent query (allowing for reactionary data blending)

2.       Blending the results from Step 1, resulting in new temporary in-memory tables

3.       Building visualizations on the tables from Step 1 and/or Step 2

AMI SQL and Standard SQL Differences

For those familiar with standard SQL, these are the differences:

1. Equality is done with ==

• AMISQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE userid == 15;
• MYSQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE userid = 15;

2. Checking for null is done with equality, ex. == null

• AMISQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE status == null;
• MYSQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE status IS NULL;

3. Strings are surrounded in double quotes

• AMISQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE name == "David";
• MYSQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE name = "David";

4. "Matches" (~~) instead of LIKE

• AMISQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE name ~~ "^Dav";
•  MYSQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE name LIKE "Dav%";

 (See Simplified Text Matching for pattern matching rules/expressions)

5. Boolean expressions && works same as AND.  || works same as OR

• AMISQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE userid == 15 AND status == null && name == "David";
• MYSQL: SELECT * FROM Users WHERE userid = 15 AND status IS NULL && name = "David";

6. By default all tables are TEMPORARY, use the PUBLIC key word to make non-temporary tables:

• AMISQL: CREATE TABLE MyTemporaryTable(id String);
• AMISQL: CREATE PUBLIC TABLE MyPermanantTable(id String);