Q For Mortals: A Tutorial In Q Programming

by Jeffry A. Borror

Learn the powerful q programming language used in the kdb+ database system developed by Kx Systems, Inc. Based on courses taught by the author at major financial institutions, this tutorial is a tested way to learn the features of q. It assumes no specific programming knowledge and presents this complex language with understandable explanations and many hands-on examples. You will be able to read and write q programs when you finish this book. The q language is both a functional programming language and a vector programming language derived from APL. It is particularly well suited to processing very large time series data. Topics covered include: data types; operations and functions; the basic data structures, lists and dictionaries; tables and keyed tables; joins and queries; commands. There is a special section demonstrating typical queries against trade data. There is also a complete reference to all the built-in functions.

478 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Nataliia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked an easy style with plenty examples and multiple references to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... While the book is quite basic, it is still super helpful for qbies.

One important thing that is missing out and should be mentioned in the very beginning is that apostrophe means an error and multiple parentheses following the "q" appear after errors. Got stuck at some point with the variable returning the wrong value.

[Jonathan Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a good tutorial on the language. It is ripe with examples
and moves at an acceptable pace. However it does contain some few errors
that become more frequent as one nears the end of the volume. At some
point I felt the amount was verging on unacceptably high and began to document
them when I had a sheet of paper near.

This noted, there are few other options for learning the language.