PRQL Changelog

    This release has 38 commits from 8 contributors. Selected changes:

    Features:

    • Rename and to && and or to ||. Operators which are symbols are now consistently infix, while “words” are now consistently functions (@aljazerzen, #2422).

    • New functions read_parquet and read_csv, which mirror the DuckDB functions, instructing the database to read from files (@max-sixty, #2409).

    0.7.1 is a hotfix release to fix prql-js’s npm install behavior when being installed as a dependency.

    This release has 17 commits from 4 contributors.

    0.7.0 is a fairly small release in terms of new features, with lots of internal improvements, such as integration tests with a whole range of DBs, a blog post on Pi day, RFCs for a type system, and more robust language bindings.

    There’s a very small breaking change to the rust API, hence the minor version bump.

    Here’s our April 2023 Update, from our Readme:

    The release has 131 commits from 10 contributors. Particular credit goes to to @eitsupi & @jelenkee, who have made significant contributions, and @vanillajonathan, whose prolific contribution include our growing language bindings.

    A small selection of the changes:

    Features:

    • prqlc compile adds --color & --include-signature-comment options. (@max-sixty, #2267)

    Web:

    • Added the PRQL snippets from the book to the (@jelenkee, #2197)

    Internal changes:

    • Breaking: The compile function’s Options now includes a color member, which determines whether error messages use ANSI color codes. This is technically a breaking change to the API. (@max-sixty, #2251)
    • The Error struct now exposes the MessageKind enum. (@vanillajonathan, #2307)
    • Integration tests run in CI with DuckDB, SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server (@jelenkee, #2286)

    New Contributors:

    • @k-nut, with #2294

    0.6.1 is a small release containing an internal refactoring and improved bindings for C, PHP & .NET.

    This release has 54 commits from 6 contributors. Selected changes:

    Fixes:

    • No longer incorrectly compile to DISTINCT when a take 1 refers to a different set of columns than are in the group. (@max-sixty, with thanks to @cottrell, #2109)
    • The version specification of the dependency Chumsky was bumped from 0.9.0 to 0.9.2. 0.9.0 has a bug that causes an infinite loop. (@eitsupi, #2110)

    Documentation:

    Integrations:

    • [prql-lib] Added C++ header file. (@vanillajonathan, #2126)

    Internal changes:

    • Many of the items that were in the root of the repo have been aggregated into web & bindings, simplifying the repo’s structure. There’s also grammars & packages (@max-sixty, #2135, #2117, #2121).

    0.6.0 — 2023-03-08

    0.6.0 introduces a rewritten parser, giving us the ability to dramatically improve error messages, renames switch to case and includes lots of minor improvements and fixes. It also introduces loop, which compiles to WITH RECURSIVE, as a highly experimental feature.

    There are a few cases of breaking changes, including switching switch to case, in case that’s confusing. There are also some minor parsing changes outlined below.

    This release has 108 commits from 11 contributors. Selected changes:

    Features:

    • Add a (highly experimental) loop language feature, which translates to WITH RECURSIVE. We expect changes and refinements in upcoming releases. (#1642, @aljazerzen)

    • Rename the experimental switch function to case given it more closely matches the traditional semantics of case. (@max-sixty, #2036)

    • Change the case syntax to use => instead of -> to distinguish it from function syntax.

    • Convert parser from pest to Chumsky (@aljazerzen, #1818)

      • Improved error messages, and the potential to make even better in the future. Many of these improvements come from error recovery.
      • String escapes (\n \t).
      • Raw strings that don’t escape backslashes.
      • String interpolations can only contain identifiers and not any expression.
      • Operator associativity has been changed from right-to-left to left-to-right to be more similar to other conventional languages.
      • and now has a higher precedence than or (of same reason as the previous point).
      • Dates, times and timestamps have stricter parsing rules.
      • let, func, prql, case are now treated as keywords.
      • Float literals without fraction part are not allowed anymore (1.).

    • Add a --format option to prqlc parse which can return the AST in YAML (@max-sixty, #1962)

    • Add a new subcommand prqlc jinja. (@aljazerzen, #1722)

    • Breaking: prql-compiler no longer passes text containing {{ & }} through to the output. (@aljazerzen, #1722)

      For example, the following PRQL query

      was compiled to the following SQL previously, but now it raises an error.

      1. SELECT
      2.   *
      3. FROM
      4.   {{ foo }}

      This pass-through feature existed for integration with dbt.

      we’re again considering how to best integrate with dbt, and this change is based on the idea that the jinja macro should run before the PRQL compiler.

      If you’re interested in dbt integration, subscribe or 👍 to .

    • A new compile target "sql.any". When "sql.any" is used as the target of the compile function’s option, the target contained in the query header will be used. (@aljazerzen, #1995)

    • Support for SQL parameters with similar syntax (#1957, @aljazerzen)

    • Allow : to be elided in timezones, such as 0800 in @2020-01-01T13:19:55-0800 (@max-sixty, #1991).

    • Add and std.lower functions for changing string casing (@Jelenkee, #2019).

    Fixes:

    • prqlc compile returns a non-zero exit code for invalid queries. (@max-sixty, #1924)
    • Identifiers can contain any alphabetic unicode characters (@max-sixty, #2003)

    Documentation:

    • Operator precedence (@aljazerzen, #1818)
    • Error messages for invalid queries are displayed in the book (@max-sixty, #2015)

    Integrations:

    • [prql-php] Added PHP bindings. (@vanillajonathan, #1860)
    • [prql-dotnet] Added .NET bindings. (@vanillajonathan, #1917)
    • [prql-lib] Added C header file. (@vanillajonathan, #1879)
    • Added a workflow building a .deb on each release. (Note that it’s not yet published on each release). (@vanillajonathan, #1883)
    • Added a workflow building a .rpm on each release. (Note that it’s not yet published on each release). (@vanillajonathan, #1918)
    • Added a workflow building a Snap package on each release. (@vanillajonathan, #1881)

    Internal changes:

    • Test that the output of our nascent autoformatter can be successfully compiled into SQL. Failing examples are now clearly labeled. (@max-sixty, #2016)
    • Definition files have been added to configure Dev Containers for Rust development environment. (@eitsupi, #1893, #2025, #2028)

    New Contributors:

    • @linux-china, with #1971
    • @Jelenkee, with #2019

    0.5.2 — 2023-02-18

    0.5.2 is a tiny release to fix an build issue in yesterday’s prql-js 0.5.1 release.

    This release has 7 commits from 2 contributors.

    New Contributors:

    • @matthias-Q, with #1873

    0.5.1 — 2023-02-17

    0.5.1 contains a few fixes, and another change to how bindings handle default target / dialects.

    This release has 53 commits from 7 contributors. Selected changes:

    Fixes:

    • Delegate dividing literal integers to the DB. Previously integer division was executed during PRQL compilation, which could be confusing given that behavior is different across DBs. Other arithmetic operations are still executed during compilation. (@max-sixty, #1747)

    Documentation:

    • Add docs on the from_text transform (@max-sixty, #1756)
    • [prql-js] Default compile target changed from Sql(Generic) to Sql(None). (@eitsupi, #1856)
    • [prql-python] Compilation options can now be specified from Python. (@eitsupi, #1807)
    • [prql-python] Default compile target changed from Sql(Generic) to Sql(None). (@eitsupi, #1861)

    New Contributors:

    • @vanillajonathan, with #1766

    0.5.0 contains a few fixes, some improvements to bindings, lots of docs improvements, and some work on forthcoming features. It contains one breaking change in the compiler’s Options interface.

    This release has 74 commits from 12 contributors. Selected changes:

    Features:

    • Change public API to use target instead of dialect in preparation for feature work (@aljazerzen, #1684)

    • prqlc watch command which watches filesystem for changes and compiles .prql files to .sql (@aljazerzen, #1708)

    Fixes:

    • Support double brackets in s-strings which aren’t symmetric (@max-sixty, #1650)
    • Support Postgres’s Interval syntax (@max-sixty, #1649)
    • Fixed tests for prql-elixir with MacOS (@kasvith, #1707)

    Documentation:

    • Add a documentation test for prql-compiler, update prql-compiler README, and include the README in the prql book section for Rust bindings. The code examples in the README are included and tested as doctests in the prql-compiler (@nkicg6, #1679)

    Internal changes:

    • Add tests for all PRQL website examples to prql-python to ensure compiled results match expected SQL (@nkicg6, #1719)

    New Contributors:

    • @RalfNorthman, with #1632
    • @nicot, with #1662

    Features:

    • New from_text format-arg string-arg function that supports JSON and CSV formats. format-arg can be format:csv or format:json. string-arg can be a string in any format. (@aljazerzen & @snth, #1514)

      1. from_text format:csv """
      2. a,b,c
      3. 1,2,3
      4. 4,5,6
      5. """
      1. from_text format:json '''
      2.     [{"a": 1, "b": "x", "c": false }, {"a": 4, "b": "y", "c": null }]
      3. '''
      1. from_text format:json '''{
      2.     "columns": ["a", "b", "c"],
      3.     "data": [
      4.         [1, "x", false],
      5.         [4, "y", null]
      6.     ]
      7. }'''

      For now, the argument is limited to string constants.

    Fixes

    • Export constructor for SQLCompileOptions (@bcho, #1621)
    • Remove backticks in count_distinct (@aljazerzen, #1611)

    New Contributors

    • @1Kinoti, with #1596
    • @veenaamb, with #1614

    0.4.1 comes a few days after 0.4.0, with a couple of features and the release of prqlc, the CLI crate.

    0.4.1 has 35 commits from 6 contributors.

    Features:

    • Inferred column names include the relation name (@aljazerzen, #1550):

      1. from albums
      2. select title # name used to be inferred as title only
      3. select albums.title # so using albums was not possible here

    • Quoted identifiers such as dir/*.parquet are passed through to SQL. (@max-sixty, #1516).

    • The CLI is installed with cargo install prqlc. The binary was renamed in 0.4.0 but required an additional --features flag, which has been removed in favor of this new crate (@max-sixty & @aljazerzen, #1549).

    New Contributors:

    • @fool1280, with #1554
    • @nkicg6, with #1567

    0.4.0 brings lots of new features including case, select ![] and numbers with underscores. We have initial (unpublished) bindings to Elixir. And there’s the usual improvements to fixes & documentation (only a minority are listed below in this release).

    0.4.0 also has some breaking changes: table is let, dialect is renamed to target, and the compiler’s API has changed. Full details below.

    Features:

    • Defining a temporary table is now expressed as let rather than table (@aljazerzen, #1315). See the tables docs for details.

    • Experimental: The function sets a variable to a value based on one of several expressions (@aljazerzen, #1278).

      …compiles to:

      1. SELECT
      2.   *,
      3.   CASE
      4.     WHEN score <= 10 THEN 'low'
      5.     WHEN score <= 30 THEN 'medium'
      6.     WHEN score <= 70 THEN 'high'
      7.     ELSE 'very high'
      8.   END AS var
      9. FROM
      10.   bar

      Check out the case docs for more details.

    • Experimental: Columns can be excluded by name with select (@aljazerzen, #1329)

      1. from albums
      2. select ![title, composer]

    • Experimental: append transform, equivalent to UNION ALL in SQL. (@aljazerzen, #894)

      1. from employees
      2. append managers

      Check out the for more details.

    • Numbers can contain underscores, which can make reading long numbers easier (@max-sixty, #1467):

      1. from numbers
      2. select [
      3.     small = 1.000_000_1,
      4.     big = 5_000_000,

    • The SQL output contains a comment with the PRQL compiler version (@aljazerzen, #1322)

    • dialect is renamed to target, and its values are prefixed with sql. (@max-sixty, #1388); for example:

      1. prql target:sql.bigquery  # previously was `dialect:bigquery`
      3. from employees

      This gives us the flexibility to target other languages than SQL in the long term.

    • Tables definitions can contain a bare s-string (@max-sixty, #1422), which enables us to include a full CTE of SQL, for example:

    • Ranges supplied to in can be half-open (@aljazerzen, #1330).

    • The crate’s external API has changed to allow for compiling to intermediate representation. This also affects bindings. See prql_compiler docs for more details.

    Fixes:

    [This release, the changelog only contains a subset of fixes]

    • Allow interpolations in table s-strings (@aljazerzen, #1337)

    Documentation:

    [This release, the changelog only contains a subset of documentation improvements]

    • Add docs on aliases in
    • Add JS template literal and multiline example (@BCsabaEngine, #1432)
    • JS template literal and multiline example (@BCsabaEngine, #1432)
    • Improve prql-compiler docs & examples (@aljazerzen, #1515)
    • Fix string highlighting in book (@max-sixty, #1264)

    Web:

    • The playground allows querying some sample data. As before, the result updates on every keystroke. (@aljazerzen, #1305)

    Integrations:

    [This release, the changelog only contains a subset of integration improvements]

    • Added Elixir integration exposing PRQL functions as NIFs (#1500, @kasvith)
    • Exposed Elixir flavor with exceptions (#1513, @kasvith)
    • Rename prql-compiler binary to prqlc (@aljazerzen #1515)

    Internal changes:

    [This release, the changelog only contains a subset of internal changes]

    • Add parsing for negative select (@max-sixty, #1317)
    • Allow for additional builtin functions (@aljazerzen, #1325)
    • Add an automated check for typos (@max-sixty, #1421)
    • Add tasks for running playground & book (@max-sixty, #1265)
    • Add tasks for running tests on every file change (@max-sixty, #1380)

    New contributors:

    • @EArazli, with #1359
    • @boramalper, with #1362
    • @allurefx, with #1377
    • @bcho, with #1375
    • @JettChenT, with #1385
    • @BlurrechDev, with #1411
    • @BCsabaEngine, with #1432
    • @kasvith, with #1500

    0.3.1 brings a couple of small improvements and fixes.

    Features:

    • Support for using s-strings for from (#1197, @aljazerzen)

      1. from s"SELECT * FROM employees WHERE foo > 5"

    • Helpful error message when referencing a table in an s-string (#1203, @aljazerzen)

    Fixes:

    • Multiple columns with same name created (#1211, @aljazerzen)
    • Renaming via select breaks preceding sorting (#1204, @aljazerzen)
    • Same column gets selected multiple times (#1186, @mklopets)

    Internal:

    • Update Github Actions and Workflows to current version numbers (and avoid using Node 12)

    🎉 0.3.0 is the biggest ever change in PRQL’s compiler, rewriting much of the internals: the compiler now has a semantic understanding of expressions, including resolving names & building a DAG of column lineage 🎉.

    While the immediate changes to the language are modest — some long-running bugs are fixed — this unlocks the development of many of the project’s long-term priorities, such as type-checking & auto-complete. And it simplifies the building of our next language features, such as match-case expressions, unions & table expressions.

    @aljazerzen has (mostly single-handedly) done this work over the past few months. The project owes him immense appreciation.

    We’ve had to make some modest breaking changes for 0.3:

    • Pipelines must start with from. For example, a pipeline with only derive foo = 5, with no from transform, is no longer valid. Depending on demand for this feature, it would be possible to add this back.

    • Table references containing periods must be surrounded by backticks. For example, when referencing a schema name:

      1. -from public.sometable
      2. +from `public.sometable`

    Features:

    • Change self equality op to == (#1176, @aljazerzen)
    • Add logging (@aljazerzen)
    • Add clickhouse dialect (#1090, @max-sixty)
    • Allow namespaces & tables to contain . (#1079, @aljazerzen)

    Fixes:

    • Deduplicate column appearing in SELECT multiple times (#1186, @aljazerzen)
    • Fix uppercase table names (#1184, @aljazerzen)
    • Omit table name when only one ident in SELECT (#1094, @aljazerzen)

    Documentation:

    • Add chapter on semantics’ internals (@aljazerzen, #1028)
    • Add note about nesting variables in s-strings (@max-sixty, #1163)

    Internal changes:

    • Flatten group and window (#1120, @aljazerzen)
    • Split ast into expr and stmt (@aljazerzen)
    • Refactor associativity (#1156, @aljazerzen)
    • Rename Ident constructor to from_name (#1084, @aljazerzen)
    • Refactor rq folding (#1177, @aljazerzen)
    • Add tests for reported bugs fixes in semantic (#1174, @aljazerzen)
    • Bump duckdb from 0.5.0 to 0.6.0 (#1132)
    • Bump once_cell from 1.15.0 to 1.16.0 (#1101)
    • Bump pest from 2.4.0 to 2.5.0 (#1161)
    • Bump pest_derive from 2.4.0 to 2.5.0 (#1179)
    • Bump sqlparser from 0.25.0 to 0.27.0 (#1131)
    • Bump trash from 2.1.5 to 3.0.0 (#1178)

    0.2.11 contains a few helpful fixes.

    Work continues on our semantic refactor — look out for 0.3.0 soon! Many thanks to @aljazerzen for his continued contributions to this.

    Note: 0.2.10 was skipped due to this maintainer’s inability to read his own docs on bumping versions…

    Features:

    • Detect when compiler version is behind query version (@MarinPostma, #1058)
    • Add __version__ to prql-python package (@max-sixty, #1034)

    Fixes:

    • Fix nesting of expressions with equal binding strength and left associativity, such as a - (b - c) (@max-sixty, #1136)
    • Retain floats without significant digits as floats (@max-sixty, #1141)

    Documentation:

    • Add documentation of prqlr bindings (@eitsupi, #1091)
    • Add a ‘Why PRQL’ section to the website (@max-sixty, #1098)
    • Add @snth to core-devs (@max-sixty, #1050)

    Internal changes:

    • Use workspace versioning (@max-sixty, #1065)

    0.2.9 is a small release containing a bug fix for empty strings.

    Fixes:

    • Fix parsing of empty strings (@aljazerzen, #1024)

    0.2.8 — 2022-10-10

    0.2.8 is another modest release with some fixes, doc improvements, bindings improvements, and lots of internal changes. Note that one of the fixes causes the behavior of round and cast to change slightly — though it’s handled as a fix rather than a breaking change in semantic versioning.

    Fixes:

    • Change order of the round & cast function parameters to have the column last; for example round 2 foo_col / cast int foo. This is consistent with other functions, and makes piping possible:

      1. derive [
      2.   gross_salary = (salary + payroll_tax | as int),
      3.   gross_salary_rounded = (gross_salary | round 0),
      4. ]

    Documentation:

    • Split DEVELOPMENT.md from CONTRIBUTING.md (@richb-hanover, #1010)
    • Make s-strings more prominent in website intro (@max-sixty, #982)

    Web:

    • Add GitHub star count to website (@max-sixty, #990)

    Integrations:

    • Expose a shortened error message, in particular for the VS Code extension (@aljazerzen, #1005)

    Internal changes:

    • Specify 1.60.0 as minimum Rust version (@max-sixty, #1011)
    • Remove old wee-alloc code (@max-sixty, #1013)
    • Upgrade clap to version 4 (@aj-bagwell, #1004)
    • Improve book-building script in Taskfile (@max-sixty, #989)
    • Publish website using an artifact rather than a long-lived branch (@max-sixty, #1009)

    0.2.7 — 2022-09-17

    0.2.7 is a fairly modest release, six weeks after 0.2.6. We have some more significant features, including a union operator and an overhaul of our type system, as open PRs which will follow in future releases.

    We also have new features in the , courtesy of @jiripospisil, including a live output panel.

    Fixes:

    • range_of_ranges checks the Range end is smaller than its start (@shuozeli, #946)

    Documentation:

    • Improve various docs (@max-sixty, #974, #971, #972, #970, #925)
    • Add reference to EdgeDB’s blog post in our FAQ (@max-sixty, #922)
    • Fix typos (@kianmeng, #943)

    Integrations:

    • Add prql-lib, enabling language bindings with go (@sigxcpu76, #923)
    • Fix line numbers in JS exceptions (@charlie-sanders, #929)

    Internal changes:

    • Lock the version of the rust-toolchain, with auto-updates (@max-sixty, #926, #927)

    Fixes:

    • Adjust fmt to only escape names when needed (@aljazerzen, #907)
    • Fix quoting on upper case table names (@max-sixty, #893)
    • Fix scoping of identical column names from multiple tables (@max-sixty, #908)
    • Fix parse error on newlines in a table (@sebastiantoh 🆕, #902)
    • Fix quoting of upper case table names (@max-sixty, #893)

    Documentation:

    • Add docs on Architecture (@aljazerzen, #904)
    • Add Changelog (@max-sixty, #890 #891)

    Internal changes:

    • Start trial using Conventional Commits (@max-sixty, #889)
    • Add crates.io release workflow, docs (@max-sixty, #887)

    0.2.5 - 2022-07-29

    0.2.5 is a very small release following 0.2.4 yesterday. It includes:

    • Add the ability to represent single brackets in an s-string, with two brackets (#752, @max-sixty)
    • Fix the “Copy to Clipboard” command in the Playground, for Firefox (#880, @mklopets)

    0.2.4 - 2022-07-28

    0.2.4 is a small release following 0.2.3 a few days ago. The 0.2.4 release includes:

    • Enrich our CLI, adding commands to get different stages of the compilation process (@aljazerzen , #863)
    • Fix multiple take n statements in a query, leading to duplicate proxy columns in generated SQL (@charlie-sanders)
    • Fix BigQuery quoting of identifiers in SELECT statements (@max-sixty)
    • Some internal changes — reorganize top-level functions (@aljazerzen), add a workflow to track our Rust compilation time (@max-sixty), simplify our simple prql-to-sql tests (@max-sixty)

    Thanks to @ankane, prql-compiler is now available from homebrew core; brew install prql-compiler.

    1

    1. we still need to update docs and add a release workflow for this:
    2. <https://github.com/PRQL/prql/issues/866>

    A couple of weeks since the 0.2.2 release: we’ve squashed a few bugs, added some mid-sized features to the language, and made a bunch of internal improvements.

    The 0.2.3 release includes:

    • Allow for escaping otherwise-invalid identifiers (@aljazerzen & @max-sixty)
    • Fix a bug around operator precedence (@max-sixty)
    • Add a section the book on the language bindings (@charlie-sanders)
    • Add tests for our Display representation while fixing some existing bugs. This is gradually becoming our code formatter (@arrizalamin)
    • Add a “copy to clipboard” button in the Playground (@mklopets)
    • Add lots of guidance to our CONTRIBUTING.md around our tests and process for merging (@max-sixty)
    • Add a prql! macro for parsing a prql query at compile time (@aljazerzen)
    • Add tests for prql-js (@charlie-sanders)
    • Add a from_json method for transforming json to a PRQL string (@arrizalamin)
    • Add a workflow to release prql-java to Maven (@doki23)
    • Enable running all tests from a PR by adding a pr-run-all-tests label (@max-sixty)
    • Have cargo-release to bump all crate & npm versions (@max-sixty)
    • Update prql-js to use the bundler build of prql-js (@mklopets)

    As well as those contribution changes, thanks to those who’ve reported issues, such as @mklopets @huw @mm444 @ajfriend.

    From here, we’re planning to continue squashing bugs (albeit more minor than those in this release), adding some features like union, while working on bigger issues such as type-inference.

    We’re also going to document and modularize the compiler further. It’s important that we give more people an opportunity to contribute to the guts of PRQL, especially given the number and enthusiasm of contributions to project in general — and it’s not that easy to do so at the moment. While this is ongoing if anyone has something they’d like to work on in the more difficult parts of the compiler, let us know on GitHub or Discord, and we’d be happy to work together on it.

    Thank you!

    We’re a couple of weeks since our 0.2.0 release. Thanks for the surge in interest and contributions! 0.2.2 has some fixes & some internal improvements:

    • We now test against SQLite & DuckDB on every commit, to ensure we’re producing correct SQL. (@aljazerzen)
    • We have the beginning of Java bindings! (@doki23)
    • Idents surrounded by backticks are passed through to SQL (@max-sixty)
    • More examples on homepage; e.g. join & , lots of small docs improvements
    • Automated releases to homebrew (@roG0d)
    • is now a single package for Node, browsers & webpack (@charlie-sanders)
    • Ranges receive correct syntax highlighting (@max-sixty)

    Thanks to Aljaž Mur Eržen @aljazerzen , George Roldugin @roldugin , Jasper McCulloch @Jaspooky , Jie Han @doki23 , Marko Klopets @mklopets , Maximilian Roos @max-sixty , Rodrigo Garcia @roG0d , Ryan Russell @ryanrussell , Steven Maude @StevenMaude , Charlie Sanders @charlie-sanders .

    We’re planning to continue collecting bugs & feature requests from users, as well as working on some of the bigger features, like type-inference.

    For those interesting in joining, we also have a new Contributing page.

    0.2.0 - 2022-06-27

    🎉 🎉 After several months of building, PRQL is ready to use! 🎉 🎉

    How we got here:

    At the end of January, we published a proposal of a better language for data transformation: PRQL. The reception was better than I could have hoped for — we were no. 2 on HackerNews for a day, and gained 2.5K GitHub stars over the next few days.

    But man cannot live on GitHub Stars alone — we had to do the work to build it. So over the next several months, during many evenings & weekends, a growing group of us gradually built the compiler, evolved the language, and wrote some integrations.

    We want to double-down on the community and its roots in open source — it’s incredible that a few of us from all over the globe have collaborated on a project without ever having met. We decided early-on that PRQL would always be open-source and would never have a commercial product (despite lots of outside interest to fund a seed round!). Because languages are so deep in the stack, and the data stack has so many players, the best chance of building a great language is to build an open language.

    We still have a long way to go. While PRQL is usable, it has lots of missing features, and an incredible amount of unfulfilled potential, including a language server, cohesion with databases, and type inference. Over the coming weeks, we’d like to grow the number of intrepid users experimenting PRQL in their projects, prioritize features that will unblock them, and then start fulfilling PRQL’s potential by working through our .

    The best way to experience PRQL is to try it. Check out our website and the . Start using PRQL for your own projects in dbt, and Prefect workflows.

    Keep in touch with PRQL by following the project on Twitter, joining us on , starring the repo.

    to the project — we’re a really friendly community, whether you’re a recent SQL user or an advanced Rust programmer. We need bug reports, documentation tweaks & feature requests — just as much as we need compiler improvements written in Rust.

    I especially want to give Aljaž Mur Eržen (@aljazerzen) the credit he deserves, who has contributed the majority of the difficult work of building out the compiler. Much credit also goes to (@charlie-sanders), one of PRQL’s earliest supporters and the author of PyPrql, and Ryan Patterson-Cross (@rbpatt2019), who built the Jupyter integration among other Python contributions.

    Other contributors who deserve a special mention include: @roG0d, @snth, @kwigley