In part 1 we saw how to define a database schema in Cell and we wrote a few basic queries. Those queries were simple enough to be expressed in SQL, and the datasets they returned were a good fit for the tabular data format that is forced on you by SQL. For more complex queries that’s often not the case. As a first example, let’s say that we need to create a report that shows the quarterly sales of all products in the database, organized by customer and year, and we want the products to be grouped by category. …
Despite the availability of a vast selection of different NoSQL data stores, relational databases remain one of the most popular options for persisting data, yet the impedance mismatch between SQL databases and application code, on top of the extra effort required to interface with any type of database, remains in many cases a problem, and that’s especially true when one has no need for all the features provided by a standalone DBMS, like server-side storage or multi-user support, but only needs a way to save data locally.
This series of articles will explore a different approach, one that makes use…
