Ari

Ari stands for Array Relational Interactive programming environment.

Ari is a set of extensions to the Goal programming language that includes SQL support, an HTTP client with rate limiting support, and GUI bindings (Fyne).

This is my personal daily driver for scripting and data analysis, even in the age of coding agents.

Installation

go install github.com/semperos/ari/cmd/ari@latest

Practical Usage

• Examples in this repo
• Shortcut API Client
• Personal Anthology

Development

Ari is implemented in Go and Goal. See the scripts folder for common development operations.

To publish a new version of Ari:

./scripts/release vx.y.z

Background

In 2024 I stumbled into a flexible, powerful setup using Julia and DuckDB to do data analysis:

• Julia as primary programming language
• Julia Pluto Notebooks as primary programming environment
• Notebook One: Data ETL
  • HTTP: Calling HTTP APIs to fetch JSON data (GitHub, Shortcut)
  • CSV: Transforming fetched JSON data into CSV
  • SQL: (Out of band) Defining SQL tables using SQL schema
  • SQL: (Out of band) Importing CSV into DuckDB using a schema defined in a SQL file
• Notebook Two: Data Analyses
  • SQL: DuckDB tables as source of truth
  • Julia: Wrote trivial utility fn to transform arbitrary SQL query results into Julia DataFrames
    • DataFrame(DBInterface.execute(conn, sql))
    • Renders as a well-formatted table in the notebook interface
    • Array-language-like story for interacting with the DataFrame
    • Fully dynamic: type information from the database schema used to dynamically populate the DataFrame with data of appropriate types.
  • Julia: Mustache package for templating functions to build a LaTeX report to house all analyses
  • Julia: Plots package for generating plots as PDF to insert into final LaTeX report
  • Julia: Statistics, StatsBase packages both for aggregates and data to plot, pull from DataFrames
  • Julia: Executed external latexmk using Julia's run to build LaTeX report

Why move away from this setup?

• Concision and expressive power of array languages.
• A lot of my code was SQL via Julia.

Ari embeds the Goal array programming language. What gaps from my Julia+DuckDB experience need to be filled to use Goal where I used Julia?

• Notebook programming environment
  • Cell dependencies and automatic re-run
    • Nice-to-have
  • Autocomplete
    • Required
  • Built-in language/library help documentation
    • Required
  • Rich rendering
    • Tables: Required
    • Graphics: Nice-to-have
• HTTP Client
  • Nice-to-have (can rely on shelling out to curl to start).
• SQL
  • Query results as Goal tables/dictionaries/arrays
    • Required
• Plots
  • Declarative plot definition producing one of PNG/PDF or HTML/JS output
    • Required
    • q tutorials simply leverage JS bridge + Highcharts
    • Julia Plots package has pluggable backends:
      • GR (cross-platform, has C bindings)
      • Plotly (JS)
      • gnuplot (command-line utility)
      • HDF5 file format
    • See GNU Octave plotting
• See Gonum

Goal already has a number of features, so we don't need to fill these gaps to start (more flexible options may be considered in the future):

• Powerful string API
• JSON support
• CSV support

License

Ari

Original software in this repository is licensed as follows:

Copyright 2024 Daniel Gregoire

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Goal

Source code copied and/or adapted from the Goal project has the following license:

Copyright (c) 2022 Yon anaseto@bardinflor.perso.aquilenet.fr

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

Rye

Source code copied and/or adapted from the Rye project has the following license:

Copyright 2019-2024 Janko Metelko

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.