Turing 034.5 - Seque’l (with your pinky popped up)
In order to interact with our databases more efficiently than writing raw SQL commands in our code, we were introduced to Sequel, conveniently (sarcasm) pronounced exactly like the database type we are interacting with. Both Josh and Jeff agreed, that within the Turing compounds it shall be referred to with en emphasis on the “e” and with your pinky finger raised so that fellow students will know which one you are talking about!
Seque’l is I Ruby library specifically built to interact with SQL databases. For the most part, it is database engine agnostic meaning it works just as well with Postgres as it does with SQLite3 (in theory), but there are some hiccups due to the slightly different variations between the engines of how they enact SQL commands.
Sequel acts as a wrapper over the database specific libraries and attempts to be OO (object oriented) in a declarative world. It does what it can to make SQL “less painful” for Ruby developers.
Probably one of the most valuable services it provides to a student like myself, is the Ruby style like error messages it returns when something isn’t right. It makes the debugging process flow more smoothly, something for which I feel anyone who doesn’t have a great grasp of raw SQL (like me) would be appreciative of.
For documentation and specific commands, click here.











