Can you share your experience?

I've tried to rewrite the testsuite example to SQL, but it's quite ugly. Also, I am not sure how to model the inheritance relationship:

    CREATE TEMP VIEW boxes AS
    SELECT 'box1' AS hostname, 'linux' AS os, 'x86-64' AS arch, 8 AS ram UNION
    SELECT 'box2', 'freebsd', 'arm', 16 UNION
    SELECT 'box3', 'windows', 'x86-64', 4 UNION
    SELECT 'box4', 'illumos', 'sparc', 4;

    CREATE TEMP VIEW compilers AS
    SELECT 'gcc' AS binary, '4.8.4' AS version, '-o' AS output_option UNION
    SELECT 'clang', '3.4.1', '-o' UNION
    SELECT 'msvc', '15.00.30729.01', '/Fe';

    CREATE TEMP VIEW tests AS
    SELECT 'frobnicate' AS name, 'frbonicate.c' AS sources UNION
    SELECT 'loadtest', 'loadtest.c helpers.c' UNION
    SELECT 'end2end', 'end2end.c helpers.c';

    CREATE TEMP view testsuite AS
    SELECT *, compilers.binary || ' ' || tests.sources || ' ' ||
        compilers.output_option || ' ' || tests.name AS cmdline
    FROM boxes, compilers, tests
    WHERE NOT(tests.name = 'loadtest' AND boxes.ram < 8);

  SELECT * FROM testsuite;

To make it less ugly, and assuming you are using PostgreSQL you could make the code a little more appealing rewriting it like that. (If you are not using postgres WITH will probably not work but VALUES instead of UNION should still work). Please also notice that "binary" is quoted because it's a reserved postgresql word.

  WITH
  boxes(hostname, os, arch, ram) AS (VALUES
      ('box1', 'linux', 'x86-64', 8),
      ('box2', 'freebsd', 'arm', 16),
      ('box3', 'windows', 'x86-64', 4),
      ('box4', 'illumos', 'sparc', 4)
  ),
  compilers("binary",version,output_option) AS (VALUES
      ('gcc', '4.8.4', '-o'),
      ('clang', '3.4.1', '-o'),
      ('msvc', '15.00.30729.01', '/Fe')
  ),
  tests(name,sources) AS (VALUES
      ('frobnicate' , 'frbonicate.c' ),
      ('loadtest', 'loadtest.c helpers.c'),
      ('end2end', 'end2end.c helpers.c')
  )  
  
  SELECT *, compilers.binary || ' ' || tests.sources || ' ' ||
          compilers.output_option || ' ' || tests.name cmdline
  FROM boxes, compilers, tests
  WHERE NOT(tests.name = 'loadtest' AND boxes.ram < 8)

Here is a fiddle to play around... http://sqlfiddle.com/#!15/9eecb7db59d16c80417c72d1e1f4fbf1/1...

But this is a stand alone query, SQL really become useful IMHO if data is stored inside the DB or gathered automatically by the db. For the inheritance I'm really clueless, it depend on what you try to achieve and i'm just a DB guy.

Thanks! That looks a bit nicer.

As for the comment about stored data, that's actually the reason why I haven't considered SQL an option at first. The use case doesn't involve any stored data, so SQL intuitively doesn't sound like the right tool for the job.

In the end, I think the cartesian paradigm can be expressed using SQL, but you have to twist your traditional SQL mindset to do that. You have to forget about tables etc.