Still using Dremel SQL occasionally and I tend to agree that certain things are easier in Dremel SQL. But it's a canonical example of continuously applying convenient patches making things worse. While something is easier to write, expressing something else becomes impossible. Examples are complicated Protos with multiple layers of repeated/map/struct stuffs...

With Google SQL, it's really verbose but a conceptually coherent design just gives you less surprises.

I'd say I like the latter more.