jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:
Why not allow arbitrary SQL queries on most of the database tables? Anyway, being able to do arbitrary SQL would greatly simplify many api.php queries. Let's see, for the URL perhaps use: api.php?sql=SELECT+DISTINCT... (maybe use no CAPS in the examples to "sell the ease of the idea".)
Long time ago, there used to be a special page on Wikimedia wikis allowing to do arbitrary SQL requests. It was restricted more and more until being finally disabled because it was able to produce too much load to servers (it also has a security risk).
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/29001