[setr]

The fundamental issue is that they have to generate SQL at the end of the day, so there’s a hard limit on how much you can really change. I don’t know why every database treats SQL as the only API, even Postgres. Even the extension systems, which have the opportunity to hook directly into DB internals (and has no standardization to bother meeting) end up with SQL as the API to do actual db operations.

[anarazel]

> Even the extension systems, which have the opportunity to hook directly into DB internals (and has no standardization to bother meeting) end up with SQL as the API to do actual db operations.

FWIW, nothing forces an extension to do so. I'm pretty sure there are several that do DML using lower level primitives.