what things can you do in the sql area of jira

[Chag]

I have seen certain questions about sql queries in JIRA but, I was wondering what kind of things you can get thatJQL doesn't provide? Is thereextra info? I'm missing something?

[Pablo Beltran]

Furthermore the differences mentioned by Udo, I would add one more: 

SQL is standard while JQL is proprietary. It means that there are a lot of tools supporting SQL whereas JQL is restricted to JIRA. 

Fortunately, there is an add-on (SQL for JIRA) which brings all the power of JQL to SQL. Therefore users can take all the benefits of SQL and JQL working together.

[Udo Brand]

JQL will give you always a list of issues - and only that. With SQL you can do more, aggregations, search for other things (Users, Projects, ...), etc.

See here for useful examples:https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA041/Example+SQL+queries+for+JIRA