Support SQL pipe operator

[simonvandel]

Is your feature request related to a problem or challenge?

Google BigQuery is releasing support for a pipe operator in their supported Sql dialect. See https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/pipe-syntax-guide and https://research.google/pubs/sql-has-problems-we-can-fix-them-pipe-syntax-in-sql/

Databricks seem to be supporting a similar operator https://docs.databricks.com/en/sql/language-manual/sql-ref-syntax-qry-select-pipeop.html

Relates to #14514 which is on supporting Sql features that make SQL easier to write and read.

Describe the solution you'd like

Datafusion supports the pipe operator, which will allow writing queries more ergonomically.

• WHERE Support WHERE, ORDER BY, LIMIT, SELECT, EXTEND pipe operators #17278
• ORDER BY Support WHERE, ORDER BY, LIMIT, SELECT, EXTEND pipe operators #17278
• LIMIT Support WHERE, ORDER BY, LIMIT, SELECT, EXTEND pipe operators #17278
• SELECT Support WHERE, ORDER BY, LIMIT, SELECT, EXTEND pipe operators #17278
• EXTEND Support WHERE, ORDER BY, LIMIT, SELECT, EXTEND pipe operators #17278
• SET
• DROP
• AS Support AS, UNION, INTERSECTION, EXCEPT, AGGREGATE pipe operators #17312
• AGGREGATE Support AS, UNION, INTERSECTION, EXCEPT, AGGREGATE pipe operators #17312
• TABLESAMPLE
• RENAME
• UNION Support AS, UNION, INTERSECTION, EXCEPT, AGGREGATE pipe operators #17312
• INTERSECT Support AS, UNION, INTERSECTION, EXCEPT, AGGREGATE pipe operators #17312
• EXCEPT Support AS, UNION, INTERSECTION, EXCEPT, AGGREGATE pipe operators #17312
• CALL
• PIVOT Support JOIN, PIVOT pipe operators #17365
• UNPIVOT
• JOIN Support JOIN, PIVOT pipe operators #17365

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[alamb]

Interesting idea -- the first thing needed is support in sqlparser if we don't alread have it

Thanks for the suggestion

[simonvandel]

Here's a short video presentation by a Google engineer https://www.hytradboi.com/2025/f8582cd3-1e39-43a8-8749-46817b2910cf-pipe-syntax-in-sql-its-time

[simonvandel]

I started work on supporting the syntax in sqlparser-rs here apache/datafusion-sqlparser-rs#1759

[alamb]

First PR is up:

• Support WHERE, ORDER BY, LIMIT, SELECT, EXTEND pipe operators #17278

[alamb]

@jonahgao or @waynexia are you interested in this project? I think making progress here will require a committer to help move it along?

(for anyone else following along, we are trying to reduce the friction for larger projects. See the following for more details)

• Discussion: DataFusion Improvement Proposal (DIPs) Process? #16886
• docs: Update documentation on Epics and Supervising Maintainers #17505