The reality is that windowing functions are well supported by all major RDBMSs (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Vertica, and to an extent Postgres and Volt - sqlite an

The reality is that windowing functions are well supported by all major RDBMSs (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Vertica, and to an extent Postgres and Volt - sqlite and MySQL are not serious contenders in this space). As for readability I think it's subjective - I certainly prefer staring at a single complex SQL statement until I understand it over say reading through pages of imperative low-level code that accomplishes the same thing.