I’ve found that all this does is make the query less readable. SQL is purpose made for writing queries, and avoids unnecessary syntax noise you get when trying to fit the query into a host language based dsl.
That really depends on the language - specifically, on whether it already has constructs that can map nicely (e.g. LINQ in C#), or macros to define them, or syntax that is generally amenable to DSLs even without macros in the picture (e.g. Lisps).
SQL itself is also not a particularly well-designed query language. E.g. the order of the query doesn't reflect the natural data flow (SELECT .. FROM .. is reversed - compare to XQuery's FLWOR, for example), there are warts like WHERE vs HAVING etc. A good DSL can do much better.
SQL is powerful. A DSL that "fixes" things in this area getting all the other language feature interactions right isn't trivial, all the while users have to learn yet another language. Take PRQL for example: https://prql-lang.org. It looks nice, but the examples are very basic. What about window functions, grouping sets, lateral, DML, recursive SQL, pattern matching, pivot/unpivot etc. Might be doable, but perhaps, they've already made a decision that won't enable one of those features without adding new kludges.
Besides, every single "fix" will be a proprietary solution, while SQL is an ISO/IEC standard that's here to stay and universally adopted.
> A good DSL can do much better.
Stonebraker's QUEL was "better", before SQL, and yet, where is QUEL today?
> Take PRQL for example: https://prql-lang.org. It looks nice, but the examples are very basic. What about window functions, grouping sets, lateral, DML, recursive SQL, pattern matching, pivot/unpivot etc.
Window functions are very much supported! Check out the examples on the home page & in the docs.
The others aren't yet, but not because of a policy — we've started with the most frequently used features and adding features as they're needed.
> Besides, every single "fix" will be a proprietary solution, while SQL is an ISO/IEC standard that's here to stay and universally adopted.
And yet in practice the fixes end up more portable. How many of the things on your list of non-basic SQL have consistent syntax across databases, yet alone consistent behaviour?
But the point here isn't just that it can be more regular than SQL. Integrating with the syntax of the host language is also a considerable advantage, ideally with static type checking.
In a statically typed language, what you get from a good query builder is that "malformed SQL statements" blow up at compile-time instead of at run-time.
SQL itself is also not a particularly well-designed query language. E.g. the order of the query doesn't reflect the natural data flow (SELECT .. FROM .. is reversed - compare to XQuery's FLWOR, for example), there are warts like WHERE vs HAVING etc. A good DSL can do much better.