DashQL -- Complete Analysis Workflows with SQL

Abstract: We present DashQL, a language that describes complete analysis workflows in self-contained scripts. DashQL combines SQL, the grammar of relational database systems, with a grammar of graphics in a grammar of analytics. It supports preparing and visualizing arbitrarily complex SQL statements in a single coherent language. The proximity to SQL facilitates holistic optimizations of analysis workflows covering data input, encoding, transformations, and visualizations. These optimizations use model and query metadata for visualization-driven aggregation, remote predicate pushdown, and adaptive materialization. We introduce the DashQL language as an extension of SQL and describe the efficient and interactive processing of text-based analysis workflows.