[dkersten]

SQL is not a simple language and expecting everyone to lean it properly is crazy. Simple queries are easy, sure, but as with all things you quickly outgrow simple things and then you're stuck. Especially if you want good performance.

[taeric]

SQL is arguably at least as easy as any other language you can define around this idea. Usually the complications come from trying to normalize the crap out of your data and expecting a single relational model to work for all use cases.

Oddly, moving this to another domain would not make things any easier in that regard. If you tried to have a single data structure that stores all of your data for all of your use cases, expect pain.