Well there are issues of where you do the computation and what can be done in parallel. A language could help by having well defined semantics that makes this easier. Embedding one language in another (as with SQL) is a pain as a programmer. Although no solutions that caught on emerged here despite some promising research.
Exactly! Some of the research is very new though, and still needs more work. The timing is just about right to get some new languages/ideas flowing (given there being lots of talk about Java taking the back seat, and no other language really taking up the lead).