IEEE Spectrum, he official journal of the world’s major technical association with almost half a million subscribers among researchers and engineers, marks the decisive role of SQL in technology today – and the great variety of industries where it finds application, from retail and e-commerce to streaming. The situation in the job market confirms this success. IEEE has analyzed thousands of listings, and SQL tops the ranking of programming languages most wanted by employers. The ability to govern databases is a precious, cross-sectional skill, which goes alongside all other languages depending on the specific positions (particularly Python, C in its various declinations, Java, and JavaScript).

SQL and Irion: the benefits of the strong relation

SQL is the reference language for managing relational databases and is at the core of Irion EDM®. That’s why the users of our Data Platform have two substantial advantages. An operational user does not have to learn a new language and can use the skills gained during the studies, while a Chief Data Officer benefits in terms of efficiency and savings because employees do not have to learn a proprietary language.

The platform’s ability to import objects from various sources and in different formats stands out among the strong sides of Irion EDM®. It is enabled by the proprietary technology (Everything as a Table), which allows working in an SQL-friendly environment with such formats as JSON or XML files, both widespread in modern applications, and thus create potentially innumerable solutions. Fun fact: in Irion, SQL is literally everywhere, and even the names of our meeting rooms take inspiration from the main elements and commands: Select, Update, Having, Group-By, Index, Table and so on!

From energy to retail: the reasons for the growth

The technical reason for SQL’s ever-growing presence lies in the fact that most modern software needs a BackEnd data bank to manage what is displayed and presented to the users (FrontEnd). And not only on the web. even if you mostly program in, say, Python or C++, IEEE Spectrum explains, it is increasingly important that your application can talk to an SQL database. “A lot of our technological infrastructure uses relational databases to store and query their data, and while not the only way, SQL is still considered the main way — or most powerful way — to interface with relational databases,” emphasizes Professor Torsten Suel, the director of computer science and engineering undergraduate programs at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

The experts IEEE has spoken to agree on two phenomena. First of all, the interest in SQL skills comes from companies in very different industries: from e-commerce to energy to retail and a significant contribution from online streaming. It can be explained by the extensive use of relational databases for storing and querying the data produced, managed, and analyzed. On the other hand, STEM students are increasingly interested in such fieds as data science and machine learning, which often leads to them taking university courses in subjects related to databases, where, in turn, SQL plays a leading role.