Odd though it might sound, the opposite is probably true for me (and I assume a bunch of other DB developers) - once you really 'grok' SQL, and as long as it's

Odd though it might sound, the opposite is probably true for me (and I assume a bunch of other DB developers) - once you really 'grok' SQL, and as long as it's written in an understandable manner, it can be easier to read than a large block of procedural (and/or functional) code. One of the big things is that there are no 'for' loops in good SQL code - i.e. it is written using set-based logic and not procedural logic. That can (sometimes) really cut down the amount of reading involved, but takes a while to get used to. Also depends how well you understand the schema in question (but that compares equally to understanding the code framework/namespace hierarchy).