Regarding table literals, some products support using
VALUES (1, 'a'), (2, 'b'), ...
as a table constructor in general, not just in INSERT, and looking at SQL:92, SQL:99, and SQL:2003 it looks to me like this should be standard SQL. Derived tables, aka subqueries, exist in SQL:92 at least as well, so whether or not that is considered recent depends on how you look at it, I think.
I am not trying to defend SQL with this, and all in all this does not take away from the points you raised, but the above were something that stood out.
At a risk of this being too far removed from the original subject, It'd be interesting to hear your reasoning behind this statement. I've used SQLAlchemy in some projects and did not find it troublesome, but that's just my experience, and I might've not pushed it enough.
as a table constructor in general, not just in INSERT, and looking at SQL:92, SQL:99, and SQL:2003 it looks to me like this should be standard SQL. Derived tables, aka subqueries, exist in SQL:92 at least as well, so whether or not that is considered recent depends on how you look at it, I think.
I am not trying to defend SQL with this, and all in all this does not take away from the points you raised, but the above were something that stood out.