May 2019 Summaries

The text discusses the history of SQL and its limitations as a query language for relational databases. It highlights issues such as lack of proper orthogonality, compactness, consistency, and poor system cohesion with application languages and protocols. The author also criticizes SQL's handling of NULL values. Despite these shortcomings, the text acknowledges that SQL has been widely successful due to its goal of empowering non-programmers to work with relational data effectively. However, it argues that SQL is facing increasing inadequacy and calls for a "better SQL" or an alternative query language like EdgeQL.

The text delves into the historical context and critiques of SQL, highlighting its evolution from a simple ad-hoc query language to a de facto standard for relational databases, largely due to its adoption by major companies like IBM and Oracle. Despite its ubiquity, SQL has faced criticism for issues such as lack of orthogonality, compactness, and consistency, alongside problematic handling of NULL values, which have contributed to its complexity and inefficiencies. The emergence of NoSQL databases partly stemmed from dissatisfaction with SQL's limitations, though they abandoned the relational model's benefits. To address these shortcomings, EdgeQL has been developed as an alternative, offering a more powerful, consistent, and user-friendly query language that maintains the strengths of the relational model while streamlining integration with contemporary application data models and supporting advanced features like JSON, REST, and GraphQL backends.