I certainly agree it's no replacement for a proper DB when full SQL functionality is needed, but it does have basic aggregates like count(), sum(), etc, available as formula fields: https://support.airtable.com/hc/en-us/articles/203255215-For...

Yes, but those formulas are scoped to the row, not the worksheet (you can't pass in a range of cells; each row essentially treats its own columns as local variables). SUM() means something completely different in Airtable than in every other spreadsheet out there. I've built out some beautiful Airtables only to find I had to switch to using Google sheets since I couldn't total up the value of a column, something I've been able to do since Lotus 123 in the 90s.

You can aggregate across multiple rows if you use a separate table to aggregate related records. I've done this for a small nonprofit to aggregate event registration data by year by linking the registration records to a new year table. Sounds kludgy, but it works.