9. A system, comprising: at least one storage device; and at least one processor coupled to the at least one storage device, the at least one processor configured for performing: (i) a reformat operation that receives as input a data set having a plurality of data elements organized in a multi-level nested data structure and returns as output a first table, wherein the first table has at least one row and each row has at least one field, the first table corresponds to a data element that is located at two levels outside an innermost level, each row of the first table corresponds to a data element nested immediately within the data element corresponding to the first table, and each field of a row corresponds to a data element nested immediately within the data element corresponding to the row; and (ii) a join operation that receives as input a second table, a third table, and a join predicate and returns as output a fourth table, such that a row from the second table and a row from the third table are combined to form a row in the fourth table if the row from the second table and the row from the third table both satisfy the join predicate, wherein when performing the join operation, the at least one processor automatically resolves any namespace conflict when joining the second table and the third table, such that if a field from a first row from the second table and a field from a second row from the third table have the same name and the first row and the second row are to be combined, then the field from the first row is automatically qualified with a name of the second table and the field from the second row is automatically qualified with a name of the third table.
9. A system, comprising: at least one storage device; and at least one processor coupled to the at least one storage device, the at least one processor configured for performing: (i) a reformat operation that receives as input a data set having a plurality of data elements organized in a multi-level nested data structure and returns as output a first table, wherein the first table has at least one row and each row has at least one field, the first table corresponds to a data element that is located at two levels outside an innermost level, each row of the first table corresponds to a data element nested immediately within the data element corresponding to the first table, and each field of a row corresponds to a data element nested immediately within the data element corresponding to the row; and (ii) a join operation that receives as input a second table, a third table, and a join predicate and returns as output a fourth table, such that a row from the second table and a row from the third table are combined to form a row in the fourth table if the row from the second table and the row from the third table both satisfy the join predicate, wherein when performing the join operation, the at least one processor automatically resolves any namespace conflict when joining the second table and the third table, such that if a field from a first row from the second table and a field from a second row from the third table have the same name and the first row and the second row are to be combined, then the field from the first row is automatically qualified with a name of the second table and the field from the second row is automatically qualified with a name of the third table. 12. The system of claim 9 , wherein the at least one processor is further configured for performing: a rank operation that receives as input a seventh table and a rank condition and returns as output a eight table, such that the rows in the seventh table are ranked according to the rank condition.