Implementing Theta Join (select/where) using iterators

[jdporter]

I present here a technique for performing a Θ join on two or more data sets.
This does in perl what SELECT/WHERE does in SQL (approximately).

The input data sets and the result set are presented via iterators. The implementation below leverages the techniques and classes I posted in Using Nested Iterators to find a Cross Product and A Filtering Iterator.

# sample data. I use arrays for illustrative purposes,
# but data could come from anywhere.
my @author = (
    [ 'Alonzo', 'Church', ],
    [ 'Stephen', 'Kleene', ],
    [ 'Wilhelm', 'Ackermann', ],
    [ 'Willard', 'Quine', ],
);

my @author_book = (
    [ 'Alonzo',  '0691029067', ],
    [ 'Stephen', '0486425339', ],
    [ 'Wilhelm', '0821820249', ],
    [ 'Wilhelm', 'B000O5Q8QG', ],
    [ 'Willard', '0674554515', ],
    [ 'Willard', '0674802071', ],
);

my @book_title = (
    [ '0674802071', 'Set Theory and Its Logic', ],
    [ '0674554515', 'Mathematical Logic', ],
    [ 'B000O5Q8QG', 'Solvable Cases of the Decision Problem', ],
    [ '0821820249', 'Principles of Mathematical Logic', ],
    [ '0486425339', 'Mathematical Logic', ],
    [ '0691029067', 'Introduction to Mathematical Logic', ],
);

my $join_authors_books = 
# a filter iterator for implementing our join condition:
Iterator::Filter->new(
    # iterator for walking the cross product:
    Iterator::Product->new(
        # iterators for each of the above arrays:
        Iterator::Array->new( \@author ),
        Iterator::Array->new( \@author_book ),
        Iterator::Array->new( \@book_title ),
    ),

    # our condition:
    # where author.name = author_book.name
    #   and author_book.isbn = book_title.isbn
    sub{
        my($author,$author_book,$book_title) = @_;
        # each is an arrayref - a row from the corresponding "table"

        $author->[0] eq $author_book->[0]
        &&
        $author_book->[1] eq $book_title->[0]
    }
);

until ( $join_authors_books->is_exhausted )
{
    my($author,$author_book,$book_title) = $join_authors_books->value;
    local($,,$\) = ("\t","\n");
    # the $author_book array doesn't contain any info not present in t
+he other two
    print @$author, @$book_title;
}