I agree. "Grokking SQL" (or rather the relational and set concepts behind it) makes it possible to mentally map how you want the query to behave.
Although SQL is way, way more verbose than J/APL it is still extremely readable, even if the query is massive. Untrained SQL users always point to big queries as some sort of code smell when in fact most queries are logically partitioned by virtue of how they work.
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I agree. "Grokking SQL" (or rather the relational and set concepts behind it) makes it possible to mentally map how you want the query to behave.
Although SQL is way, way more verbose than J/APL it is still extremely readable, even if the query is massive. Untrained SQL users always point to big queries as some sort of code smell when in fact most queries are logically partitioned by virtue of how they work.
I replaced a 5k line system with a 140 line SQL query. So massive SQL can have pretty significant multiplier in main code reduction.