34. A computer-implemented method comprising: determining, by at least one processor of a computer system, based on metadata associated with data of a database, which of a plurality of operations may be performed on one or more datasets associated with a graphical query displayed to a user through a graphical user interface on a display of the computer system; determining, from the metadata, one or more natural language expressions (NLEs) of the operations; determining, from the graphical query, an alias corresponding to one or more of the datasets, wherein the alias includes a user-provided phrase by which to refer to the corresponding dataset; providing the one or more NLEs of the operations including the aliases of the one or more datasets to a user via the interface; receiving a selection by the user of one of the provided operations; and rendering, in the graphical query, a graphical depiction of the selected operation on the one or more datasets; and constructing, by at least one processor of the computer system, a machine-readable structured query language (SQL) query based on the graphical query, wherein constructing the query includes recursively processing one or more of the datasets associated with the graphical query to identify columns of the source datasets referenced by one or more SQL substatements that correspond to and element of the graphical query and to add those columns to a SQL SELECT statement, and wherein the constructing further includes incorporating the SQL substatement into the machine-readable SQL query.
34. A computer-implemented method comprising: determining, by at least one processor of a computer system, based on metadata associated with data of a database, which of a plurality of operations may be performed on one or more datasets associated with a graphical query displayed to a user through a graphical user interface on a display of the computer system; determining, from the metadata, one or more natural language expressions (NLEs) of the operations; determining, from the graphical query, an alias corresponding to one or more of the datasets, wherein the alias includes a user-provided phrase by which to refer to the corresponding dataset; providing the one or more NLEs of the operations including the aliases of the one or more datasets to a user via the interface; receiving a selection by the user of one of the provided operations; and rendering, in the graphical query, a graphical depiction of the selected operation on the one or more datasets; and constructing, by at least one processor of the computer system, a machine-readable structured query language (SQL) query based on the graphical query, wherein constructing the query includes recursively processing one or more of the datasets associated with the graphical query to identify columns of the source datasets referenced by one or more SQL substatements that correspond to and element of the graphical query and to add those columns to a SQL SELECT statement, and wherein the constructing further includes incorporating the SQL substatement into the machine-readable SQL query. 35. The method of claim 34 wherein the rendering comprises rendering, in the graphical query, a result set appearing as a result of performing the selected operation on the one or more datasets.