/what.is.it?

HTSQL ("Hyper Text Structured Query Language") is a schema-driven URI-to-SQL translator that takes a request over HTTP, converts it to a SQL query, executes the query against a database, and returns the results in a format best suited for the user agent (CSV, HTML, etc.).

HTSQL 2.0 is a work in progress and not yet ready for production use. The initial supported release will be in October of 2010.

/documentation

The syntax and semantics are described in the HTSQL 2.0 Tutorial. Although it has an outdated syntax, there is also a ICOMP '07 paper describing HTSQL.

You can run any examples from the tutorial on our Live HTSQL 2.0 Demo Server.

/community

Subscribe to the mailing list htsql-users or join us in the #htsql IRC channel on freenode. For business users, you may find our commercial site, http://htsql.com, useful.

/download

There are 2 versions of HTSQL available at BitBucket. HTSQL 1.0 is a stable version for PostgreSQL with provisional support for MySQL and SQLite. We will only be adding bug fixes and minor improvements to this branch.

HTSQL 2.0 is a working alpha release for PostgreSQL and SQLite (soon we'll add MySQL support). This release has a different plugin API and slightly different URL syntax (to support table expressions). While it lacks many 1.0 features, this is our future direction.

To download,

$ hg clone
          http://bitbucket.org/prometheus/htsql

See the file INSTALL in the project directory for installation instructions.

/license

HTSQL is a native web query language for your SQL database. Prometheus Research offers HTSQL under a dual licensing model.

HTSQL is under a BSD style permissive license (no restrictions on proprietary applications) when used in conjunction with public domain or open source database system software, such as SQLite, PostgreSQL or MySQL.
We offer commercial licensing for for commercial database systems such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and the like.

We feel that this licensing strategy, while not OSI approved, provides significant benefit to open source applications -- while providing us the ability to fund future development work.

/credit

HTSQL was developed with funding from the Simons Foundation. This material is also based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #0944460. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.