A Critique of Modern SQL And A Proposal Towards A Simple and Expressive Query Language

Summary: Empirical critique of modern SQL from real-query analysis exposing inconsistent syntax, poor learnability, and limited extensibility. Proposes SaneQL: a concise, consistent language preserving multiset semantics and supporting user-defined operators that integrate with built-ins. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: hf2803d68e2a39938
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2024
Pagerank: 7.5639428e-05
Overall Rank: 3,180 | 78.63%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Thomas Neumann (Technical University of Munich)
2. Viktor Leis (Technical University of Munich)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{neumann_cidr24,
        address = {Amsterdam, Netherlands},
        series = {{CIDR} '24},
        title = {{A Critique of Modern SQL And A Proposal Towards A Simple and Expressive Query Language}},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Conference} on {Innovative} {Data} {Systems} {Research}},
        author = {Neumann, Thomas and Leis, Viktor},
        year = {2024}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 11 of 11 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
3,147	SQL Has Problems. We Can Fix Them: Pipe Syntax In SQL	2024	VLDB	7.5951285e-05
3,989	Beyond Relations: A Case for Elevating to the Entity-Relationship Abstraction	2025	CIDR	6.8703153e-05
5,511	Runtime-Extensible Parsers	2025	CIDR	6.0994747e-05
9,794	Raqlet: Cross-Paradigm Compilation for Recursive Queries	2026	CIDR	5.1257999e-05
10,354	Database Research needs an Abstract Relational Query Language	2026	CIDR	4.9793485e-05
10,436	Dialect-Agnostic SQL Parsing via LLM-Based Segmentation	2026	SIGMOD	4.9793485e-05
10,822	Decisionhouse: Prescriptive Analytics in the Data Stack	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
10,832	ReSequel: Robust LLM-assisted Query Rewriting and Optimization using Templatization and Sampling	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
10,889	Rhyme Native: Efficient Code Generation for Structured and Semi-Structured Workloads	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,022	Hard to Read, Hard to Maintain? Refactoring Complex SQL into Wvlet Pipelines	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,033	An Extended Tutorial and Vocabulary for Relational Language Design in an Era of AI-Assisted Query Generation	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 4 of 4 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,369	Towards Scalable Dataframe Systems	2020	VLDB	0.00010899832
3,427	Efficient Processing of Window Functions in Analytical SQL Queries	2015	VLDB	7.3082914e-05
3,930	Flexible Rule-Based Decomposition and Metadata Independence in Modin: A Parallel Dataframe System	2022	VLDB	6.9185978e-05
6,707	Machine Learning, Linear Algebra, and More: Is SQL All You Need?	2022	CIDR	5.7038956e-05

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