Purge SQL pages

[nenharper]

Purge SQL section (based on Kyle & Drew's suggestion)

[Ethan-Arrowood]

Needs to be removed from docs/ too.

Also need to check for dead links throughout rest of docs referencing these pages.

And need to consider appropriate redirects. These pages are likely heavily indexed by search engines, and may even exist throughout other posts and things. I think redirecting to like another querying page or even just the home page of the docs is fine.

[kriszyp]

There are actually still a fair number of references/examples of using SQL outside of the sql directories. I would think that removing/updating these are actually more important than deleting the SQL directories.
And is it possible to leave the SQL directories and remove it from the table of contents and all links to it, so it doesn't 404, it just it isn't a navigable part of our docs?

[Ethan-Arrowood]

If the pages still exist then Google and AIs will continue to index them. So if complete removal is too much then we should consider appropriate updates.

But moreover, I think Nenne is going through nearly all of the docs pages and making updates on not all but most pages. It may be duplicate work for her to updated all references to SQL in this PR and then also modify those pages again later.

@nenharper could you try and analyze our docs for references to SQL and see just how many there are? Maybe see if its not much more work to just remove those too while we are here.

[kriszyp]

Yes, Google indexes lots of stuff that ends up on page 5 million of searches. But if it has no links to it, that's literally how Google (and presumably AI) decides if it is actually important, useful, and meaningful. It seems like that is what we want to communicate to users; this is not useful and should be avoided. I would not think that 404s are the best way to communicate that to Google or AI.

And leaving SQL examples in place while removing SQL pages seems backwards to me. I don't understand how changing the SQL to other queries is duplicative? If this is part of the work of updating pages, it seems like this would be progress on that front.

[Ethan-Arrowood]

I'm not sure I'm completely following anymore. I think the original directive here was to remove SQL pages because we don't want to be promoting that feature anymore. I'm not sure if the state of the PR reflects that anymore.

I agree with you that we need to remove references to SQL throughout our docs too. I just didn't necessarily think it had to happen all at once.

So lets start over and make sure we are aligned on what actually should be done.

Should we remove SQL entirely from our docs? If so, for what versions? If not, what change (if any) should we implement?

[kriszyp]

I think the original directive here was to remove SQL pages because we don't want to be promoting that feature anymore

Right. We often receive directives that conflate the actual need (we don't want to promote SQL, we don't want users using it), with a suggested solution (remove SQL pages). I believe it is our job to honor the real need, while also determining if the suggested solution is really the correct solution for that need, or if there is a better way to solve it. In this case, I don't think removal is necessarily the best solution, and there is a better way to actually honor the real need here.

I am certainly open to different ideas, but again, IMO, I don't think page removal is the best way to honor the essential goal of demoting SQL usage. I think the best way to do that is removal of SQL examples, and either removal of links to the SQL pages, or active and bold warnings on the SQL pages which more clearly and explicitly communicate best practices and what to avoid.