OPINION
SQL AT FIFTY
Dave Stokes is a technology evangelist at Percona.
Structured Query Language (SQL) is 50 years old. It is the only programming language from the ’70s that is still around and – unlike COBOL and Fortran, which are confined to limited niche roles – still thriving and expanding. In 2023, the IEEE declared SQL the most popular programming language. But why is SQL still around? It is certainly not easy to learn its syntax. Every database vendor has a quirky implementation that does not port directly to another one. Forgetting aWHERE clause can easily wipe out an entire table in an instant.