Bah. People keep confusing the syntax with the data model. SQL is simply a notation to express theorems in relational set theory. It&#x27;s pretty much the only pure-functional, side-effect-free programming language that&#x27;s actually gone mainstream [0]. If you look carefully at the APIs of the &quot;No SQL&quot; databases, you&#x27;ll find them introducing relational set theoretic features.<p>To paraphrase Paul Graham&#x27;s unbearably smug comment about Lisp: once you add filter, group by, and join, you can no longer claim to have invented a new query language, just another dialect of SQL. Math has this funny habit of remaining true no matter how many mean things people say about it on their blogs.<p>[0] I mean basic core SQL, not the vendor-specific stuff like PL&#x2F;SQL.