Sql to Relational Algebra

I'm contemplating writing an Sql parser, more so for my own personal education, and am wondering if anyone has had any experience that they can share with me on a question that I have.

I have good experience with Sql, since I maintain and develop my companys Sql database engine. The product I maintain parses Sql and constructs a parse tree based on the elements of the Sql statement. Would building the tree using "Relational Algebra" elements be better instead? The Sql statement would be strictly Dml.

Some advantages that I can think of:

1. Insulates the core logic of the query processor from the query language
2. Provides identical semantics to redundant elements of the query language
   • Danny