Hi, The database Neo4j has a language called "Cypher" where one of the key selling points is they "don’t need join tables".
Here is an example from https://neo4j.com/developer/cypher/guide-sql-to-cypher/ SQL: SELECT DISTINCT c.company_name FROM customers AS c JOIN orders AS o ON c.customer_id = o.customer_id JOIN order_details AS od ON o.order_id = od.order_id JOIN products AS p ON od.product_id = p.product_id WHERE p.product_name = 'Chocolade'; Neo4j's Cypher: MATCH (p:product {product_name:"Chocolade"})<-[:PRODUCT]-(:order)<-[:PURCHASED]-(c:customer) RETURN distinct c.company_name; Imagine if we could simply write the SQL query like this: SELECT DISTINCT od.order_id.customer_id.company_name FROM order_details AS od WHERE od.product_id.product_name = 'Chocolade'; I took the inspiration for this syntax from SQL/JSON path expressions. Since there is only a single foreign key on the order_details.order_id column, we would know how to resolve it, i.e. to the orders table, and from there we would follow the customer_id column to the customers table, where we would finally get the company_name value. In the where clause, we would follow the order_details's product_id column to the products table, to filter on product_name. If there would be multiple foreign keys on a column we try to follow, the query planner would throw an error forcing the user to use explicit joins instead. I think this syntactic sugar could save a lot of unnecessary typing, and as long as the column names are chosen wisely, the path expression will be just as readable as the manual JOINs would be. Thoughts? /Joel
