[ttfkam]

> Doesn't it seem weird that dozens of application languages have become popular since the 1970s, but we're still using dialects of the same old database query language?

Indeed. Do you honestly believe that a half-century of data storage professionals and vendors are blindly moving forward with a hobbled tool?

Or maybe there are aspects of SQL as a set-oriented 4th generation programming language that aren't apparent to folks who are intimately tied to an imperative or functional programming paradigm as opposed to a declarative DSL for set theory.

[Zak]

Within popular application languages, for any given paradigm, there are almost always several languages that aren't merely dialects of each other. C# isn't a dialect of Java. Ruby isn't a dialect of Python. Rust isn't a dialect of C++.

PRQL demonstrates that a set-oriented declarative language need not be a dialect of SQL and isn't the first language to do so (QUEL appeared in the 1970s). It seems odd to me these alternatives haven't gained much popularity.