> Why the hack are we still talking to databases with SQL strings and not directly specifying the Query-AST?
The same reason language servers took off. Instead of one to one mapping, SQL enables one to many mapping with minor tweaks, allowing everyone to do whatever they want over a well known, well defined, mature abstraction.
In the same spirit, I may ask why we're not writing assembly or even machine code, and we have programming languages? Testers, sure, abstraction means clarity up to an extent, but why the developers themselves still use programming languages?
You’re missing the point if you think that that is “in the same spirit”.
SQL-as-strings and SQL-as-AST are still the same thing. What is being proposed it not to write procedural code for record retrieval instead of declarative SQL.
The same reason language servers took off. Instead of one to one mapping, SQL enables one to many mapping with minor tweaks, allowing everyone to do whatever they want over a well known, well defined, mature abstraction.
In the same spirit, I may ask why we're not writing assembly or even machine code, and we have programming languages? Testers, sure, abstraction means clarity up to an extent, but why the developers themselves still use programming languages?