Well, SQL is not, perhaps, the best thing every when it comes to query languages. I mean, it works okay, and it's "good enough", and I'll defend it on those grounds. But it's hardly the epitome of query languages.
Truth be told, my ideal query language would be something Lisplike, with query operations specified by functions and special operators (or macros), and "views" just being newly defined querying functions or macros.