A naukri.com initiative
Dev
1M
132
Image Credit: Dev
How We Built 🔧🦾 the SQL Autocomplete Framework ⚙️🧱 with ANTLR4
- Bytebase, a DevSecOps solution for databases, has built an autocomplete framework for its SQL Editor that supports different SQL dialects and offers extensibility and strong completion capabilities.
- An ANTLR4-based parser processes user input and generates a parse tree or abstract syntax tree representing the syntactic structure of the input according to the grammar.
- Autocomplete follows a syntax-agnostic, core-based approach that leverages an automaton created from syntax rules, allowing predictions that are syntax-agnostic and extensible.
- The approach includes a core that identifies terminal symbols (keywords) and grammar rules of interest (identifiers), and post-processing that converts candidate rules to corresponding strings and return them to the user.
- Bytebase SQL Editor supports common autocomplete scenarios relative to table names, column names, and function names.
- The ANTLR4-based autocomplete core is implemented in Golang and used in five different SQL dialects: Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and DynamoDB.
- The Bytebase SQL Editor is open-source, and developers can visit the Bytebase console to interact with the database from the SQL Editor and embed the SQL Editor into their internal web portal.
- The ANTLR4 code that serves as the basis for the SQL Editor is also open-sourced, with Bytebase having identified areas of improvement in the ANTLR4 Golang runtime.
- Future articles will look more closely at ANTLR4-based autocomplete core implementation, syntax-specific processing, and how to integrate it with LSP to provide a complete and robust SQL autocomplete.
- Bytebase's tech stack choice is Golang for the ANTLR4-based autocomplete core, and it has ensured cross-SQL dialect support while reducing development and maintenance costs significantly, allowing a small team to maintain autocomplete functionalities for multiple dialects.
Read Full Article
7 Likes
For uninterrupted reading, download the app