SQL - Criticism

Criticism

SQL deviates in several ways from its theoretical foundation, the relational model and its tuple calculus. In that model, a table is a set of tuples, while in SQL, tables and query results are lists of rows: the same row may occur multiple times, and the order of rows can be employed in queries (e.g. in the LIMIT clause). Furthermore, additional features (such as NULL and views) were introduced without founding them directly on the relational model, which makes them more difficult to interpret.

Critics argue that SQL should be replaced with a language that strictly returns to the original foundation - for example, see The Third Manifesto. Other critics suggest that Datalog has two advantages over SQL: it has a cleaner semantics which facilitates program understanding and maintenance, and it is more expressive, in particular for recursive queries.

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