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"Datafun: a functional query language" by Michael Arntzenius

Strange Loop Conference2 HN recommenders · 2018–2025
9K views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2017-10-02

Michael Arntzenius's Strange Loop talk on Datafun, a functional query language that brings database-style querying into a general-purpose language. It discusses bridging database theory and programming languages.

HN recommends it as an approachable talk on a total functional generalization of Datalog, by the language's author.

Databases & storageFunctional programmingProgramming language design

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4 comments from Hacker News

@a-saleh2018 · in “A relatively simple Datalog engine”

"Streams of solution trees" kinda reminds me of mikro-kanren [1]. When I was using Clojure roughly 3 years ago, kanren was quite popular embedded logic. W.r.t. Datafun, i learned about it from a talk its creator gave on strangeloop last year [2], for me it seemed quite approachable :) [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

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@tracnar2022 · in “Why Can't Database Tables Index Themselves? (2006)”

This talk explored a bit that idea, you could have a (full) programming language which is more like SQL so you get good enough datastructures (and indexing- without manual tuning: [VIDEO] I think Prolog (another commenter pointed it out) and datalog do this to some extend.

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@refset2023 · in “Deconstructing Datalog [pdf]”

Thanks for sharing the summary. There's also this Strange Loop 2017 talk "Datafun: a functional query language" with an early overview of this research: [VIDEO]

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@fogzen2025 · in “Implementing Logic Programming”

Yes, for some kinds of operations on some kinds of data structures. The keyword/property is "monotonicity". Monotonic functions are guaranteed to terminate under fixed-point semantics. Look into Datafun: A total functional language that generalizes Datalog. Also be sure to watch Datafun author Michael Arntzenius's Strangeloop talk. [LINK] [VIDEO]

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