Facebook Query Language (FQL), provides us with a much more optimized and flexible mechanism for retrieving both specific and lengthy sets of data. In this chapter we're going to explore FQL, and use it to retrieve data from Facebook that we couldn't so easily obtain using the standard Graph API, as well as loading some more optimized versions of data that's already accessible to us through Graph API objects and connections.
FQL is database-style approach to loading data from the Facebook API. The syntax is very similar to that of SQL, which makes it inherently both more complex and more adaptable, and allows for much more precise data requests, with comparatively smaller like-for-like responses than the standard Graph API.
All of the objects available through the Graph API are represented in FQL tables, and all of the Graph API connections can be replicated with FQL queries. Objects and connections in the Graph API are simply a representation of the most common information requested...