SQL is not just about a table but multiple tables and their relationships. If it was just about running queries against a single table then basic ordering, filtering, aggregation, and annotation would be easy to achieve in almost any language.

Soon as you start doing things like joins, it gets complicated but in theory you could do something like an API of an ORM to do most things. With using just operators you quickly run into the fact that you have to overload (abuse) operators or write a new language with different operator semantics:

  orders * customers | (customers.id == orders.customer_id | orders.amount > Decimal(‘10.00’)

But it would be nice to have it built in so talking to a database would be a bit more native.

Every time I see stuff like this (Google’s new SQL-ish language with pipes comes to mind), I am baffled. SQL to me is eminently readable, and flows beautifully.

For reference, I think the same is true of Python, so it’s not like I’m a Perl wizard or something.