I wonder whether Java/JDBC developers would prefer it if there was a way to access all SQL database metadata through a data structure as simple as a built-in Java object. This is how we provided access to our own metadata to Lua: tuple spaces are exported as nested Lua objects, with methods or members used to query properties and configuration parameters, iterators to go after the whole data set, built-in metamethods integrating our user-defined types with the rest of language primitives (“for” loops, print and length operator, and so on).

Hey, to print the whole configuration down in Lua one can do this:

for name, value in pairs(box.cfg) do print(name, "=", value) end

To grab a handle on an an index in a given tuple space on just writes:

index = box.space[0].index[2]
tuple = index.find(key)
for field in ipairs(tuple) do print(field) end

And Lua, as a more modern language, takes care of a lot of issues SQL developer has to keep in mind: accessing non-existing objects, resource management, static typing, and so on. And did I mention that LuaJIT is fast?