What is nquery?

nQuery is a SQL engine that lets you query different types of data sources, databases, key-value stores, and web services, using a unified SQL-like language. Instead of learning different tools or APIs for each data source, you write SQL-like commands that nQuery translates and executes across whatever you're connecting to. Think of it as a translator. You tell nQuery what you want in SQL, and it figures out how to fetch that data from your actual storage system, whether that's a traditional database like MySQL, a simpler key-value store like HBase, or even an HTTP API. The main benefit is convenience: one query language works everywhere, and you can even join data across multiple sources in a single command, pulling user records from a key-value store and shop records from MySQL in one go. The engine does this by letting you plug in your own "adapter" or "loader" for each data source. You tell nQuery how to talk to your storage system (things like "here's how to fetch a single record" or "here's how to find records in a range"), and nQuery handles the rest. It also includes some procedural programming features, you can store intermediate results in variables and build complex multi-step queries, including concurrent or sequential execution depending on whether steps depend on each other. The README mentions this would be useful for scenarios like adding SQL support to your existing web services, checking SQL syntax before sending it elsewhere, or consolidating data from multiple databases without writing custom code. The project is relatively young (low star count, written for older Node.js versions), so it's more of a proof of concept or starting point than a production-ready tool, but it shows an interesting approach to making different data sources queryable through a common language.