I didn't mean SQL wan's a success. I meant, as the commenter above me said, a higher-level tool doesn't necessarily replace the lower-level ones, or reduce the need of them.

Relational databases replaced a whole raft of vendor-supplied databases and custom-built solutions. It was a new tool for software developers, not a replacement.

A good chuckle of my career has been breaking outncustom tools out or a database because the database can't scale.

IA is the new Excel.

I don't actually agree. SQL did replace the need for programmers, especially for complex questions. We sabotaged its interfaces to existing GUIs for mundane questions and made CRUD a limitless profession.

The funny/sad part about computer science is that people don't want to understand the costs of customization and sales/management/marketing forever want it as a differentiator.

SQL could have eliminated us from the flow of many niches as easily as the spreadsheet did from business operations. I think why it didn't has more to do with market timing.

SQL was too much ahead of its time, but we are indeed slowly adopting the "avoid operational specifications, use high-level languages, make your language fit the problem instead of the opposite" philosophy of the 4th generation languages.