ORMs attempt to bridge object and relational models. (With results that vary from "works fairly well" to "screw it, give me a DB handle and I'll just write SQL".) I see what you're saying, but they operate at a different place than generators/translators.
Stored procedures are just that - they get a name and persistence. PLSQL has procedural extensions, but it is still SQL.
Fabian Pascal (who has made a career out of SQL criticism) proposed a replacement system called Raquel that would have a "real" set-theory-based query language. I don't think it went anywhere.
My best guess as to why there aren't many alternatives: SQL is both mature and Good Enough(tm), but importantly, also unsexy and complicated. Database engine development is more similar to kernel development than, say, web application development, and there are simply far fewer engineers qualified to do it. Building some framework in Javascript currently gets a ton of love, and in comparison is far easier than developing a SQL replacement that is roughly as performant as SQL and either less awkward linguistically or functionally superior.
People do take up those sorts of projects, but they're pretty lonely unless some combination of talent, luck, and timing turns into rock star status (Linus wasn't the only one writing unix clones at the time).
Yes. And PL/Perl is perversely fun. I don't think I've ever seen other languages used in production, though[1]; I think folks tend to stick to PLSQL because of defaults.
[1] I'm sure people do, but this discussion has an anecdata deficiency.
Stored procedures are just that - they get a name and persistence. PLSQL has procedural extensions, but it is still SQL.
Fabian Pascal (who has made a career out of SQL criticism) proposed a replacement system called Raquel that would have a "real" set-theory-based query language. I don't think it went anywhere.
My best guess as to why there aren't many alternatives: SQL is both mature and Good Enough(tm), but importantly, also unsexy and complicated. Database engine development is more similar to kernel development than, say, web application development, and there are simply far fewer engineers qualified to do it. Building some framework in Javascript currently gets a ton of love, and in comparison is far easier than developing a SQL replacement that is roughly as performant as SQL and either less awkward linguistically or functionally superior.
People do take up those sorts of projects, but they're pretty lonely unless some combination of talent, luck, and timing turns into rock star status (Linus wasn't the only one writing unix clones at the time).