Date: 2025-05-15
Time: 14:00–14:25
Room: Breakout Room 2
Level: Intermediate
SQL queries commonly join tables on conditions like A.x = B.y. While this approach works, it merely indicates that two columns share a comparable value; it does not confirm whether one column references the other, nor does it clarify the direction of that relationship. As a result, the join’s semantic meaning remains implicit, forcing developers to rely on naming conventions, documentation, or external insights to fully understand the underlying relational structure.
As databases grow more complex—layered with views, common table expressions (CTEs), and evolving schemas—there is a growing need for clearer, more resilient constructs. We must ensure that queries remain correct over time and that their semantics are immediately evident, especially as schemas change. Integrating foreign key relationships directly into the join syntax addresses this need, resulting in queries that are inherently more explicit, stable, and robust.
This presentation will show the need for this feature for both developers and DBAs, the syntax chosen, the syntaxes not chosen, and our efforts to integrate this into the SQL Standard itself. We will also show a working proof-of-concept patch.