> My dream is to write actual SQL in the middle of my code, as a valid syntax and first-class construct. As I said, that's not really a realistic goal.

Sure, it is. See how regexes in some languages are first class datatypes, so you can have a regex literal in your code (with backreferences too, I believe).

There is no good reason that SQL statements can't also be a datatype, with SQL literals in the code like the way regexes do. I'm imagining something like this:

   sql_t stmt = /SELECT #1, #2 FROM #3, #4 WHERE #3.#1 = #4.#2/;
   sql_res_t res_cursor = sql_exec (stmt, t1_col1, t2_col2, T1, T2);

The stmt above is not a string, hence is part of the AST and can be checked at compile time. The execution might be a problem (returned columns have to be checked too).