Comment by amluto

I would go one step farther: the SQL is awkward and long because the SQL language not at all optimized for data that is normalized all the way to binary relations.

And if you’re trying to benchmark one of these binary relationship query tools against DuckDB, keep in mind that DuckDB is heavily optimized for wide tables and is really not heavily optimized for point queries.

(Also, I, personally, would be a bit unhappy with a DBMS that cannot express, as part of the schema, that a movie has at most one or exactly one title.)