SQL

The standard language for asking questions of a database.

SQL is the long-established language used to pull information out of databases, the neat tables of rows and columns where most business data lives. A query might ask for all customers in a city, or last month’s sales.

It matters in AI because a growing goal is to let people ask those questions in plain English and have the AI write the SQL for them, so you get answers from your data without learning the language yourself.