Stefan Tilkov's Random Stuff

Presentation: Pipes and Y! Query Language

It seems there actually is an alternative to the visual Pipes! language, as mentioned in this presentation:

YQL is similar to Pipes but uses a textual textual language and can process both Yahoo web services data and any structured data with an URL. It has an SQL like syntax with three statements: SELECT, SHOW, DESC. This approach is more powerful and the applications created are protected.

More info on YQL.