First Sql now Dataphor

Yeah, come on all of you, big bright men,
Data management needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in sql land
So put down your server and pick up some rum,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.

To paraphrase William F. Buckley Jr.'s quote from Austrian Willi Schlamm:
The trouble with sql is sql.
The trouble with database management is sql.

I'm an advocate of something wonder-filled called 'Dataphor' (www.alphora.com)
If your into database management, data modeling and sql programming
I have big news for you. So if your working with MS Sql Server, Oracle,
DB2 etc. etc. here's a news flash:
You've have been waiting for Dataphor forever but you just don't know it!

Take a gander at these 'select' statements:

Dataphor supports a table 'type'. So you can represent a
table in a 'select' statement using keywords that define
a table, ie. row, key and of course table. 

select
table
{ row {1 ID,10 ID2,'AA' stringvalue},
row {1,20,'BB'},
row {1,30,'DD'},
row {1,40,'DD'},
row {1,50,'EE'},
row {2,60,'DD'},
row {2,70,'AA'},
row {2,80,'EE'},
row {2,90,'BB'},
row {2,100,'BB'},
row {2,110,'FF'},
key {ID2}
}

ID ID2 stringvalue
-- --- -----------
1  10  AA
1  20  BB
1  30  DD
1  40  DD
1  50  EE
2  60  DD
2  70  AA
2  80  EE
2  90  BB
2 100  BB
2 110  FF

A rose is a rose is a rose. Tables in Dataphor are
'always' a table, ie. a row is always unique and
the table has a key. If a key isn't specified all
the columns of the table will make up the key.
Therefore there is no DISTINCT keyword in Dataphor.
This is a 'BIG,BIG' deal as you will see.

select
(
table
{ row {1 ID,10 ID2,'AA' stringvalue},
row {1,20,'BB'},
row {1,30,'DD'},
row {1,40,'DD'},
row {1,50,'EE'},
row {2,60,'DD'},
row {2,70,'AA'},
row {2,80,'EE'},
row {2,90,'BB'},
row {2,100,'BB'},
row {2,110,'FF'},
key {ID2}
}
) over {ID,stringvalue}

The above query returns only ID and stringvalue columns using over.
Do you see that duplicate rows are eliiminated.
You sent in a real table, you got a real table returned.

ID stringvalue
-- -----------
1 AA
1 BB
1 DD
1 EE
2 AA
2 BB
2 DD
2 EE
2 FF

Now lets return ID by removing the other columns.
Why doesn't sql have a 'remove', especially when you  
want to get rid of one column and you got a bunch.

select
(
table
{ row {1 ID,10 ID2,'AA' stringvalue},
row {1,20,'BB'},
row {1,30,'DD'},
row {1,40,'DD'},
row {1,50,'EE'},
row {2,60,'DD'},
row {2,70,'AA'},
row {2,80,'EE'},
row {2,90,'BB'},
row {2,100,'BB'},
row {2,110,'FF'},
key {ID2}
}
)
remove{ID2,stringvalue}

ID
--
1
2

Get it! :) 
Ok here's a little more nudging. Think of the verb to 'dup', as in
'de-duping' a table using GROUP BY, JOINS, DISTINCT. All that craziness
of getting rid of duplicates is history. Good riddance. And note that
'dup' can also be an adjective:)

Do these predicates look familiar:

=, <>, <, <=, >, >=,

well you can now apply them to tables! Is this a step forward?
What do you think!:)

Next some kewl examples of how to do stuff that usually drives you nuts.