"For all its popularity and success, SQL is a study in paradox. It can be clunky and verbose, yet for developers, it is often the simplest, most direct way to extract the data we want. It can be lightning quick when a query is written correctly, and slow as molasses when the query misses the mark. It's decades old, but flush with new, bolted on features."
"These paradoxes don't matter because the market has spoken: SQL is the first choice for many, even given newer and arguably more powerful options. Developers everywhere-from the smallest websites to the biggest mega corporations-know SQL. They rely on it to keep all their data organized. SQL's tabular model is so dominant that many non-SQL projects end up adding an SQL-ish interface because users demand it. This is even true of the NoSQL movement, which was invented to break free from the old paradigm."
SQL combines widespread adoption and familiarity with numerous structural and practical shortcomings. The tabular relational model leads to proliferation of tables that strain scalability, and SQL lacks native support for JSON or XML, forcing expensive marshalling. Real-time workloads and complex JOINs create performance and developer friction. Columnar inefficiencies, optimization limitations, and reliance on denormalization introduce space waste and engineering debt. Bolted-on features and inconsistent syntax fragment implementations, while not everything fits a table-centric model and SQL standards vary across systems. Alternative data models and query languages address many pain points, yet SQL retains dominance.
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