Structured Query Language, the standard means of manipulating and querying data in relational databases since the 1980s, has dropped out of the Tiobe index top 10 in recent months and now ranks 12th, its lowest-ever position. The Tiobe index for June 2025 was published June 8.
“SQL will remain the backbone and lingua franca of databases for decades to come,” said Paul Jansen, CEO of software quality services vendor Tiobe, in the June release of the index. “However, in the booming field of AI, where data is usually unstructured, NoSQL databases are often a better fit.” Jansen likened the popularity of NoSQL to the rise of dynamically typed languages such as Python if compared to well-defined, statically typed languages such as C++ and Java.
While SQL was a serious top 10 player when the index began in 2001, it was taken from the list after someone noted in 2004 that SQL was not a programming language. In 2018, it was pointed out that SQL is Turing-complete, which makes it a programming language. So SQL was re-added to the index.
