Zoho rolled out this week CouldSQL, addressing the needs of businesses to connect and integrate their data across Zoho Services though SQL language, including from JDBC and ODBC database drivers.

Even though SQL may seem a little old, as it carries over three decades of history with it, and “is probably not too popular with the Facebook generation,” Zoho believes SQL continues to hold a key role.

Despite the fact that there are a lot of powerful, fast web applications out there, which replace the traditional databases, they tend to be limited and not as powerful as the full-blown SQL, especially because they don’t take into account the intricate data relationships that SQL describes, Rodrigo Vaca , Zoho’s director of marketing, wrote on the company’s blog.

“The problem is, there’s a fundamental mistake people make when they think of SQL: they think of the access language and the storage mechanism as one and the same. But in fact, they can be separated,” he explained.

Zoho ClouldSQL allows corporate developers to access Zoho cloud data though SQL on both other cloud applications and through traditional on-premises software.

CouldSQL relies on three main elements: it is the first technology to allow data interaction with data on the could from another could applications, it supports multiple SQL dialects, such as ANSI, Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Informix, and it allows developers to access data in the cloud with JDBC/ODBC drivers as if the data were stored in a local database.

The CloudSQL addresses developers, not end-users, Zoho warned. Furthermore, it is offered as an extension to the existing Zoho Web API.