One word of caution to those trying to improve on SQL - for the many users of SQL, technology is a secondary aspect of their jobs. Hence any replacement runs into the issue that many of its core users do not have the bandwidth to spend significant effort on learning another querying language.

I will cheer everyone who tries to displace SQL, because I do think it needs to be displaced but would also want to caution such people on the magnitude of the task ahead of them.