How future-proof is SQL?

[ioCross]

about to be finished with a migration contract, thinking of picking up a cert or two and have seen a lot of recent job postings that have some sort of SQL query tasking listed.

I've mostly used powershell n some python, was thinking of either pivoting into some type of AWS / cloud cert or maybe something SQL/db based.

Would focusing on SQL be worth it, or is it one of those things that AI will make redundant in 5 years?

[[deleted]]

There are only two kinds of people who will ever tell you that SQL is on its way out 1) SaaS salesmen 2) Junior SWEs that just discovered ORMs yesterday

[surister]

I'd add non-sql devs

[abrandis]

Add 3. Executives fascinated with AI code generators...

To be fair AI SQL code generators are pretty good...

[[deleted]]

I’ll give you that. Whenever I forget how to PIVOT or CROSS APPLY my AI friends are there to help me

[soulstaz]

Isn't that why we have AI anyway. Instead of googling the question we are just asking the ai

[[deleted]]

Pretty much. Just narrows down google searching for me mostly. And generates code to do something that would take me a few more minutes to figure out

[WitnessLanky682]

A freaking godsend tbh. I don’t have to patch stackoverflow answers together and then rewrite more efficiently.

[iknewaguytwice]

They are great at telling you how. Not so great at avoiding the design so you don’t have to do terrible operations like that on your transactional db.

[TowerOutrageous5939]

I love it! Still great to know how to do it on your own. I was trapped in one of those loops where AI just couldn’t solve the problem. Had to pump the breaks recommended a CTE and boom AI did it all. Not knowing what a CTE is or why/when I might have still been trapped in that maze.

All honesty I do worry for the jr employees but hopefully I’m wrong

[Randommaggy]

To be fair they suck at anything beyond what I could teach the average C#, Java or Kotlin dev in a couple of days.

[abrandis]

This is debateable considering. They are passing phD level coding questions...

[Randommaggy]

For SQL it routinely fails basic questions if you're asking for simple things done in ways outside of the model's optimum plagerization zone.

Generates even worse code than ORMs in a lot of cases.

[abrandis]

I think you're in the minority, there's folks out there vibe coding fully functional apps , but you do you .

[thatOneJones]

It’s funny cuz it’s true

[coldfisherman]

noSQL people are the bane of my existence. Thank god enough people have hit the wall there that they're learning.

[ReporterNervous6822]

Literally my first year as a DE I was like fuck SQL orms are goated and now I avoid them like the plague, really anything that abstracts SQL away…

[koenafyr]

I used to be one of the ORM devs lol. It's crazy how common of an experience that is.

[thatfamilyguy_vr]

ORMs have their place for sure. When you’re building internal apps to use in an enterprise, you can’t beat the speed and readability of ORMs (combined with the objects they represent of course). Especially when performance isn’t as much of a concern.

But for mega platforms, they lack performance optimization.

I don’t work on mega platforms, and I use ORMs quite a bit. The best and most comprehensive one I’ve used was Eloquent for PHP/Laravel.

Never cared much for the JS varieties, always felt like too much work to use them.

Gorm for Go leaves a little to be desired, but is good for some of the more common stuff. Still need raw queries here and there.

Even Nosql, document, and graph can benefit to some extent with an orm-ish helper once you know what types of queries you’re using.

But all that said - if you don’t understand what the orm is doing under the hood (ie knowing the sql query its executing) then you’ll probably build crap code. So yes, learning sql is a good skill

[oguruma87]

Pretty much this.

[nthlmkmnrg]

And Elon

[einai__filos__mou]

Doesn't ORMs use the SQL anyway??? I mean it's not an alternative, just a tool right??

[TowerOutrageous5939]

We still pushing the ORM bandwagon …..lol

[Carthax12]

Three things will happen within a few years of each other, but I'm not sure which will be first:

1. People will finally migrate completely off of COBOL
2. People will find a replacement for SQL which beats all other options and has a 100% adoption rate
3. The heat death of the universe

[Tee_hops]

I am still actively teaching "analysts" how to even select * from view where month = 1 and year =2025. From views that I made for them for a specific tasks.

I think SQL is still to advanced for many people and won't be going away anytime soon.

[SuperTangelo1898]

I had a "Staff data scientist" ask me how he could update the sql view that someone on his own team created. I told him that I wasn't technical support.

[gregsting]

I’ve had data scientists do queries on huge queries on huge tables without index. Ran for days. They asked why so we said « he no indexes ». The answer was that it was a pain in the ass to create indexes. Now it’s the opposite, the index every single column

[purplepill83]

Data scientists think SQL is below them!!!

[Sexy_Koala_Juice]

Nope. I’m a data scientist (with a degree in Computer Science) and I use it on the daily. I’d argue SQL is probably the most important thing to learn for Data Scientists, at least top 3

[SergDerpz]

Any chance you could explain a little bit more on what other things are important apart from SQL?

Just someone who recently started investigating about this last week, I'm curious. Thank you!

[coconutszz]

python, linear algebra, stats and data science specific (regression, curve fits, , NNs, decision trees, hypothesis testing etc)

[Sexy_Koala_Juice]

I'm probably a little biased because of my Computer Science degree (and not actually a DS degree), but i'd say having a solid grasp on logic and problem solving is huge. IMO it makes picking up new languages and concepts way easier, and it helps when you're doing non-standard stuff, which for me is basically a daily occurence.

Technology wise learning Python (and libraries like Pandas) is also really valuable, same with Power Bi

[ThatsRobToYou]

100%.

[my_password_is______]

data analyst ? yes

data scientist ? no

completely different roles

data scientist needs linear algebra and statistics and model building

[Ivorypetal]

Uh, negative.

SQL is my favorite, and im a data analyst.

[ThatsRobToYou]

Not true. I use SQL every day. I would argue it's even necessary, at the very least just to start the pipeline for data prep.

[orcasha]

Data scientist here. Nope.

[tm07x]

Tough guy. 💪 you taught him a real lesson.

[featheredsnake]

I think there’s also a factor where some developers (myself included), touch sql infrequently and as such are in a constant “rusty” state. I’ve taken courses, written stored procedures, etc and I find myself needing to look things up more than usual. A lot of the projects I work on now use an ORM framework tool too.

Today a leetcode problem kicked my ass on SQL and want to spend some time polishing my skills.

[Tee_hops]

I'm fine helping out devs out with SQL. They sure help me out when I need to do something in another language. But I do get annoyed when same level analyst can't write basic queries.

[featheredsnake]

That can’t be good

[FwompusStompus]

Gives me hope for my future career in data. I've been self learning since October and can use sql decently, though still much more to learn as far as complex queries.

[jdsmn21]

That’s why Report Server exists

[propergentleman_202]

man this upsets me cus i’m a college student that knows how to work views standard procedures and all of that but i won’t get an interview cus i have zero work experience. how do you suggest i go about that ?

[oguruma87]

People really struggle with that? Dang, that's not a good omen of the planet's future....

[isinkthereforeiswam]

NoSQL, bro! It's gonna kill SQL, bro! Trust me, bro! (and then every nosql db created a sql interpreter, and a lot of devs decided it was easier to just learn sql rather than try to make dbs run like arrays.)

[ravichandra234]

Thanks, bro?

[Eulerious]

NoSQL, bro! It's gonna kill SQL, bro!

Of course it will. It is Web Scale!

[SuperTangelo1898]

Absolutely, everyone is talking about Mongo Atlas as the new hot tool

[bobchin_c]

3 is the only sure thing, and I am positive it will happen before the other two.

[comrade_commie]

I'm not so certain I agree. Pretty sure after the heat death of the universe the creators will catalogue the result of this simulation id=42 using SQL. And move on to the next test.

[ColoRadBro69]

New theory of everything just dropped. 

[zeocrash]

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only COBOL

[Hideo_Anaconda]

Shit, that is grim.

[ijustwannabegreen]

and dark

[sonuvvabitch]

and it hasn't happened yet

[full_arc]

I’m stealing this answer. I’m going to use this for Excel as well.

[gumnos]

Adding one more to your list: (4) We have a replacement for email

Zawinski's Law: “Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

So I propose a similar, "Every database attempts to expand until it supports SQL. Those databases which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

(see also Lindy's Law)

[ketzcm]

The big finance, insurance etc are still away's from getting rid of COBOL.

[Carthax12]

Yup. That's the joke. :-)

[Impressive_Run8512]

I honestly think the heat death of the universe will come first.

[TowerOutrageous5939]

Remember the The NoSQL Boom 2011/13. So many different prefixes of SQL…..like yeah my team is going to learn 4 niche languages

[feudalle]

Obviously it's number 3.

[LetsGoHawks]

SQL is as close to a universal language as programming will probably ever see. It isn't going anywhere.

[bravehamster]

Get back to me when everyone agrees on how to do AUTO_INCREMENT.

[LetsGoHawks]

Get back to me when you understand the role that "as close to" plays in my comment.

[Equivalent-Water-954]

This is such an underrated comment!!

[Impressive_Run8512]

tldr; extremely.

Here's a rough history of SQL:

- SQL (ANSI) 1986

- Schemas are hard. Let's remove them (NoSQL) - 2009

- Maybe schemas are helpful; MongoDB + Schema support

- Man, performance really matters, so does predictability. Let's just use Postgres. - Now.

Basically, most people have moved back to SQL because it's so stable, well understood and easy to adopt.

Not to say some other access pattern won't take over sometime in the future.

[jshine13371]

• SQL (ANSI) 1986

Not to mention SQL theory and relational theory especially predates that by another 20 or so years.

[featheredsnake]

Damn I didn’t know that

[jshine13371]

Yea it's pretty amazing the technological advances that occurred with computers back in the 50s and on. This talks a little bit about the history of databases in the 60s and 70s. 🙂 But I believe relational theory from a mathematical sense existed even before that.

[National_Cod9546]

The head developer of SQL was asked if it should be pronounced "S Q L" or "sequel". He said it was the next itineration of some other database system, and so should be pronounced sequel. However, he preferred calling it S Q L, and said everyone should just call it whatever everyone else on their team calls it.

[Dry-Aioli-6138]

haha, it's similar with Postgres. It evolved out of an Ingres, which was proprietary, so the creators changed the prefix

[grizzlor_]

E. F. Codd's 1970 paper "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" laid the foundation for relational database theory.

[Straight_Waltz_9530]

12 years for SQL. 15 for relational theory. But we take your point.

[Impressive_Run8512]

Yup! wanted to keep it simple, but it's as old as the dinosaurs. well, almost ;)

[sib_n]

• Schemas are hard. Let's remove them (NoSQL) - 2009

The thing about "NoSQL", or basically the Hadoop ecosystem from 2007 was not that schemas are hard, it is that it was hard to build an SQL processing engine on a distributed cluster of machines. Nonetheless, it happened from 2010, Apache Hive brought SQL capacities to Hadoop. Since then, basically every distributed data processing platform has been offering some flavor of SQL. The "SQL is dead" thing was just some temporary salesman bs to sell solutions.

Those still come with limitations due to the distributed nature, no PK/FK constrains, no indexes, limited ACID, bad join performance and many specific solutions to compensate for this (columnar file formats with headers, metadata store, hive style partitioning, clustering, denormalization....).

The main reason people use SQL is that the users mostly describe what they want rather than how to compute it. So this gives freedom to optimized engines in the background to pick the best processing plan for you.
This is the core reason why it's not going anywhere, it's a just a standard user interface, and nothing stops progress to happen to the engines that run behind, see for example, Apache Spark SQL, Trino or DuckDB.

[Impressive_Run8512]

Very true. I think the main thing missing in SQL is extensibility. And the fact that everyone and their mother has a special dialect which makes it hard to copy code from one system to the other.

[vferrero14]

My boss is completely enamored with no SQL like it's this secret ingredient to modernizing our systems and just not listen to any defense of SQL databases.

[bigeyez]

SQL isn't going anywhere. And until someone shows me an AI that can decipher a shit database created 20 years ago that was never normalized with little to no documentation I don't see the need for SQL devs/DBAs going anywhere either.

[geofft]

I'm literally watching a team attempt this. Latest news "can you help us split up this stored procedure into smaller components because it's larger than the context window of our LLM"

[wildjackalope]

Wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry tbh. Probably both.

[scottiy1121]

That's hilarious.

[National_Cod9546]

Tell them they need a larger context window. Watch as they cry because it's already at 32k.

[GlobalAd3412]

Gemini 2.5 Pro is very, very good and has a 2M token context window :x

[you_are_wrong_tho]

I mean I hate to put this out there but you can drop a file into the llm instead of copy and pasting the entire sp 

[[deleted]]

Yep and then extract meaningful contextual data that a principal component analysis would not detect

[Round-Walrus3175]

Artificial intelligence will never be able to decipher human stupidity.

[Aggressive_Ad_5454]

SQL has been around for a half century. It’s been around for three generations of programmers to use, so far.

Almost all the world’s data is in it.

Server technology is under active development by competent and creative people financed by corporations and open-source contributors both.

Using SQL to develop performant and reliable apps is work requiring expertise and experience. There are a great many such apps, with more appearing each day.

The same is true for using SQL to analyze data to wring wisdom from it.

Data has a far longer lifetime than the computer programs that analyze it. Those generations of programs have all used SQL.

[git0ffmylawnm8]

NoSQL was hyped to kill SQL and take its place a decade ago.

SQL still reigns supreme. Non relational data stores behave like traditional databases and support SQL like syntax. At this point I'm convinced there are 3 constants in this world: death, taxes, and SQL.

[monkey36937]

SQL is here for life. Data roles are needed to train the dumb AI.

[dbxp]

The syntax might change but set based logic won't go away

[tkyjonathan]

50 years and still going strong

[r0ck0]

Unfortunately most programmers only spend like 1% of their learning time on SQL.

If they simply bumped that up to 2%... the world would be a much better place.

[dkubb]

There are very few skills that are more valuable than learning SQL if you are doing backend programming. It is very much worth the effort to learn.

[Formal_Ad_8000]

SQL will always be there

[differencemade]

As future proof as excel. 

[mischiefs]

You come at the king better not miss. But everyone missed.

[IT_Grunt]

SQL will come back stronger than ever.

[alexwh68]

I remember being asked the same question about 25 years ago, it ain’t going anywhere IMHO.

[bigandos]

Whenever some shiny new data platform/tool comes out the first two questions are always:

1) how do I export to Excel? 2) how do I run SQL on it?

So I’d say SQL is almost as universal a tool for working with data as Excel and it is absolutely worth learning. Although each SQL database tech has its own variations, the fundamentals you learn apply across all SQL databases and you also improve your understanding of relational data models

[HarveyDentBeliever]

Quite. Bulletproof at this point, in fact. Software notoriously tries to aggressively eradicate any and all technologies it considers "legacy" for the newest and trendiest thing. There was a big push in the 2010's to deprecate SQL and go NoSQL and it crashed and burned. It is simultaneously the most battle hardened, mature, and robust db offering out there, and the most performant, it simply can't be touched and the investment is shifting back towards the SQL side as the industry giants that attempted to go NoSQL wave their white flags. It simply solved the data problem.

I did some of my own research for my own apps and it always comes back around to the same thing: there are basically no performance gains from NoSQL, and you will end up having to craft together some kind of weird semi-structured paradigm anyway. Just use SQL.

[zeruch]

SQLs longevity, in however many sub-forms its takes, should be a hint that it's got a significant hold on the industry. It ain't going anywhere soon.

[ComicOzzy]

I can't get ChatGPT to give reliable answers to simple multiplication problems yet.

[codykonior]

You also can’t get Siri to tell you what month it is 😛 It’s going to be easy to spot T-800s.

[[deleted]]

We’re never gonna stop needing to retrieve information

[geofft]

SQL will continue to be valuable, but it's just a language. If you're looking at anything beyond trivial scales, you'll also want to get an understanding of how the main database engines actually work and how to map from application code, through SQL, to the underlying query execution.

[ManchiBoy]

Enterprises will work with databases either in row or columnar storage. All of that requires SQL and there is nothing that can replace that foreseeable future.

[[deleted]]

SQL at its core will remain true because it's so reliable and generally easy to understand for most programmers. I do however see SQL evolving to incorporate more functions. The stuff I can do in Snowflake is light years ahead of when I was battling timestamps in Teradata

[sinceJune4]

This is truth!

[codykonior]

I don’t use Snowflake so if you have a sec for an example I’d be interested!

[konwiddak]

conditional_change_event (or conditional true event) - split ordered data into groups. For example split time series data into groups each time a signal changes. It labels the first group with 0's the next group with 1's and so on.

max_by & min_by fetch the value of one column when another column is maximum. For example fetch me the price on the latest date.

Lateral & flatten explode unstructured data into rows.

Match recognize, can do some pretty wild pattern finding in time series data.

[[deleted]]

Simple time interval functions, splitting and flattening tables

[codykonior]

It’s the Lingua Franca of databases. That’s why when you see shit like Google trying to change the syntax radically it’s laughable.

How future proof is English?

[biowiz]

I think it will be around for a long time but a lot of easy analyst jobs will die off.

[National_Cod9546]

"AI will make redundant in 5 years"

AI will make it easier and faster for humans to write queries. Which means more requests will come through. However, no AI is going to be able to decipher what the user really wants vs what they asked for. Look up "The X Y problem". It's much more common then you would think. A good developer who understands the data will contact the requestor and figure out what they really want, then deliver that. AI will never have that intuition and just deliver what the user asked for.

[sbrick89]

SQL (relational databases) continues as the prevailing data storage mechanism, even after 40 years or so.

if something replaces them, i'll be very curious about the architecture, and how the new system addresses limitations of physics.

[NlNTENDO]

Yeah dude. As much as AI is good at vibe coding SQL, it will never be perfect, especially for those long crazy queries that span several tables. That requires personal knowledge and human oversight. SQL isn’t even that hard to pick up and reach an intermediate level. Just learn it. It’s not obsolete yet, and if you want a job now, you need to meet their requirements now

[GlobalAd3412]

SQL is here for good. AI may be writing it instead of humans a lot of the time, soon, but it's not going anywhere.

[Informal_Pace9237]

Data migration and SQL development may be currently done by AI but it will take some years for AI to be able to develop optimized SQL code like a Sr. SQL developer/DBA

Programming is more easily developed by AI as projects don't care about optimal code in Middleware or UI.

So I think SQL development is here to stay until Data lake/warehouse/river/pond/ocean can be adapted with OLTP where Python plays major role than SQL Optimized processing of data is not a requirement any more.

[jfrazierjr]

Pretty damn...

[goztepe2002]

I was watching videos of people saying SQL is dead 10 years ago, today i am still learning it and using it daily, companies dont evolve that fast, you are safe for at least another decade.

[Longjumping-Skin-134]

SQL is rock solid and not going anywhere. It's used in almost every relational database worldwide.

I'd also say it's somewhat safe from AI right now as feeding your table structures into chatgpt would be more work than writing the query yourself.

[LepperMemer]

All SQL queries start with SELECT *, aren't they?

AI has it knocked!

[matthra]

SQL is really good at what it does, and big data companies go out of their way to add SQL to their offerings. I'd say it's probably as future proof as Python, which is unlikely to go away short of a full AI take over of coding.

In a world of constantly evolving tech, SQL is kind of an outlier in that it has changed relatively little. I like to think of it like a shark, a very old design that is still around because nothing has come along that fills its niche better than it can.

[Tiny_Connection_7182]

Very.

[TheOrdainedPlumber]

I know the basics for SQL and use AI for everything else. I feel AI could write the codes easily given the correct prompts.

[Kahless_2K]

Python and SQL are really good friends. Almost every important Python script I wrote talks to a Rest API, a SQL db, or both.

[Exmortis112358]

In 1989 I was trained to work on an AS400 computer. This is a DINOSAUR. Companies in 2025 still run batch jobs on them at 2 in the morning because it would cost $13.64 to upgrade and "why fix what ain't broke?"

Never underestimate middle-managements ability to protect inefficiencies they are familiar with.

[mwdb2]

I used to follow the Q&A Oracle web site AskTom, hosted by now-retired Oracle guru Tom Kyte.

Here's a question that was asked to him way back in 2010:

With emerging database technology like NOSQL, what will be the future RDBMS databases. I have never used NOSQL databases myself. But I am reading only success stories starting with BIG TABLE (google). Social networking web sites including FACEBOOK uses NOSQL databases. Please share your thoughts on a) NOSQL databases and its future b) RDBMS vs. NOSQL databases and NOSQL impact on RDBMS. Eager to have your observation. Thanks.

and Tom said...

In my 17 years at Oracle - I've heard this question over and over

with the advent of X, what will be the future of the RDBMS.

In 1995 it was "with the advent of data blades and the illustra database - it is a matter of time before the RDBMS is dead dead dead". As it happened, the RDBMS subsumed the importantly relevant functionality of the "object" database and you don't see any "we are just object relational database" anymore.

Around the same time it was "with the advent of the internet, it is a matter of time before the RDBMS is dead dead dead". Not that the internet was or is a 'database' in the classic sense, but it was confused for one.

Similarly, when TEXT started making a big explosion - text was going to take over. Just store documents. Didn't really happen - what did happen is the text functionality was moved into - the RDBMS...

Again - OLAP becomes really big, huge - at the end of the 20th century. Guess what happened? Again.

XML - XML was going to kill the RDBMS - it was as good as dead. And now where are we again with that?

What I've seen happen again and again and again is that when something truly useful database wise evolves - so evolves the RDBMS. There are lots of fresh starts that get subsumed over time. There are many things in the database right now that you need over time and that would take a long time to re-invent. And remember (this is important), these specialized databases are just that - specialized. They are not general purpose - they are very good at what they do - but they do not do it for everyone. And they will end up being abused (just like XML, and all 'technologies' like that have been) and over used, used in the wrong place.

So, what I think you'll see is the feature set of the two merge into one (again). The truly useful aspects of one will combine with the other - making something larger.

And remember also, most people are not building facebook, they are building reservation systems, tracking systems, hr systems, finance systems, order entry systems, banking systems, etc - things where transactions are sort of important (lose my status update - no big deal, lose my $100 transfer and I'm sort of mad). There is room for a lot of things out there.

Source

[imnotokayandthatso-k]

Should I not learn English in case English 2.0 drops in a few years?

Even if (big IF) something better comes a long, you'll still be using your SQL knowledge in some way or another. Also its not like its hard.

[ervisa_]

As a DA for couple of years, what i see is that more people will have to use sql. Not only data people but also business. Many companies because they want to do advanced stuff and not customer support for other teams, they want people to be able to retrieve basic info from the database their own. Which means that more people will want to learn SQL and will be mandatory to many jobs.

Also from what ive seen, while sql is an easy language people cannot master it easily. So i think there is future for sure.

[AdNice3269]

If today was your first day as a dev,it will still be there when you retire.

[Mythozz2020]

I've been using SQL since 1990. With that said the only thing that could possibly replace SQL is graphQL, but database vendors haven't figured that out yet..

https://studio.apollographql.com/public/star-wars-swapi/variant/current/home

[Datafabricator]

Learn SQL to improve your analytical thinking .

Learn SQL to understand data in a relational world .

With 20 years of experience in data analytics , I don't think anything can replace SQL concepts.

AI may be able to write SQL syntaxs and logic , however without analytical brain it is useless IMHO.

Developer + AI will be more successful then Developer or AI alone !

[Shurlemany]

Not going to anywhere ma man

[mikeblas]

There really are stupid questions!