[brochington]

> Trying to map english to formal logic is a fools errand.

I don't disagree, but this would not be a 1-1 mapping, if that matters.

>From my experience, what keeps non-technical people from writing queries isn't SQL, it's stuff like joins.

I've met very few non-technical folks willing to brave learning any part of SQL. In my case joins would be an implementation detail, mostly handled by the product, but possibly with an escape hatch for technical folks.