SQL is not a great API but its a great human interface. JSON based query language is much better API but terrible human interface. So depending on your objectiv

SQL is not a great API but its a great human interface. JSON based query language is much better API but terrible human interface. So depending on your objectives, it might make things better or worse. MySQL is strange choice but think I understand why the author picked it - from his other critique he seems to look at databases as a building block of hyper-scaleable applications, not as a tool for humans to do often-ad hoc things with data. I would never recommend MySQL for "business data" - it had and possibly still has way too many footguns with regards to number behavior, character encodings and Unicode, date and timestamp handling, and so on - hell, it doesn't have a proper MERGE and it only got CTEs in the latest version. But if you're using it as persistence store that barely more than key-value store, why not? I have no problem believing the author that that kind of use is more common.