Introducing ReQL

A database is only as good as its query language.

For a developer, the query language is basically an interface to the database; however, it's disappointing to say that most of the existing query languages are easy to use or powerful but not both. Thankfully, with ReQL, you get the best of both worlds as the query language is intuitive but very powerful at the same time.

An explicit query language

Instead of writing complex, SQL-like queries, ReQL lets you write practical, simple queries. One of its best features is that ReQL can be considered an explicit query language. The way in which you approach RethinkDB is not only simple and intuitive, but it also gives you a good idea of how the query is being executed within the database, giving you the right balance of abstraction.

Let's look at an example query:

r.table('users').filter({ name: 'Alex' }).orderBy(r.desc('age'))

In this simple query, we get all the users with the name Alex ordered in descending order by age. If we were...