Look, no one has ever accused SQL of being fun. It’s ubiquitous, it’s important, and it’s probably something you need to understand if you’re going to be doing any sort of work with data analytics, web development, and any other field that involves, y’know, data. But fun? Not so much. But maybe that’s just because no-one has ever turned SQL into SimCity. Here to test that hypothesis is software developer Nik Samokhvalov with a project called PGSimCity, a fully web-based 3D city that doubles as a demonstration of how SQL—and, specifically, PostgreSQL—actually works. As Samokhavlov’s GitHub explains, “Every building is a real mechanism,” and each forms an important part of how the “city” as a whole functions. Samokhavlov describes his project as being aimed at “engineers who are good at their job and have never had to operate a database,” and while I certainly meet the second criterion, it’s time for me to be honest: I am no sort of engineer, the last time I dug into the internals of a database was with Microsoft Access, and I have not even the faintest semblance of a clue how any of this stuff works.
That should probably disqualify me from finding this site interesting, but as it turns out, the opposite is true. Once you get a handle as to what’s going on—and for that purpose, I recommend the introductory tour, which is accessed by hitting the “Tour” button located up in the middle of the menu bar—It’s genuinely fascinating watching the various pieces of the “city” interact and following the little chunks of data as they whizz around the landscape.
