I'm not sure how that's a problem, since SQL is a fully-general data language.
> require absurd hacks or custom dlls,
Views require neither hacks nor "custom DLLs" in any RDBMS I am aware of. Can you provide a concrete example?
> not properly source controlled,
There's no reason DB schemas (including, but not limited to, view definitions) can't be source controlled.
> You can't combine views easily
Yes you can, whether by "combine" you mean as joined source relations, or as criteria that need to be combined to slice and dice the same source data. That's, like, playing right to the strength of SQL and RDBMS systems.
> you can't cache results,
Well, not generally incrementally or in something like a recently-used cache; a number of RDBMS's do support materialized views, though.
Views are not "unmaintainable".
> restricted to SQL structures,
I'm not sure how that's a problem, since SQL is a fully-general data language.
> require absurd hacks or custom dlls,
Views require neither hacks nor "custom DLLs" in any RDBMS I am aware of. Can you provide a concrete example?
> not properly source controlled,
There's no reason DB schemas (including, but not limited to, view definitions) can't be source controlled.
> You can't combine views easily
Yes you can, whether by "combine" you mean as joined source relations, or as criteria that need to be combined to slice and dice the same source data. That's, like, playing right to the strength of SQL and RDBMS systems.
> you can't cache results,
Well, not generally incrementally or in something like a recently-used cache; a number of RDBMS's do support materialized views, though.