I would like to be able to do LIMIT 60 SECONDS in SQL
github.comIt might be even better for the user interface (REPL, GUI, web frontend) to have a nice way to send the command "stop and show current results" like ^C or ^G or a button that sends a signal to the backend. I assume this is only going to be useful in an interactive context, after all.
Yes, that's true. After all, it's the functionality that is important, regardless of the means to achieve it. On the other hand, the fact that it is part of the syntax has other advantages: - it makes the functionality independent of the querying tool used - it is immediately understandable, and easy to use - it can be offered by automatic completion and therefore have a higher discoverability power than a function that would be hidden in the editor
Not that great since its nondeterministic. Maybe a better solution is to use a columnar database.
Certainly, but the use case mentioned here is not related to a performance issue. It's more about syntactic sugar when a user writes SQL in interactive mode to explore data.
How would a columnar DB help?
BTW I believe all the big RDBMs now support columnar tables.
It is a nice feature to have and probably not too hard to implement.