Plenty of SQL features have been added since the 70s, notably window functions (which TFA relies on heavily). Most of the major databases are from the 80s, and

Plenty of SQL features have been added since the 70s, notably window functions (which TFA relies on heavily). Most of the major databases are from the 80s, and even new kid on the block MySQL has been around since the mid 90s. SQL draws a very hard line between the expression of the query and the AST that is used in the actual implementation. Database vendors like this aspect because they are free to implement whichever optimizations they want, but application developers want to build queries programmatically and optimize them themselves before passing them to the db engine, hence the tension in threads like these.