SQL is not just for reading and writing data from databases, but also for efficient data analysis. It's designed to manage, manipulate, and query data efficiently, especially large datasets. SQL can perform complex aggregations, joins, and calculations on the fly directly within the database server, reducing network traffic and overhead costs. SQL is simple to use with a small set of core commands like SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY, and JOIN. It also includes a wide range of additional functions and capabilities for mathematical and statistical operations, string manipulation, date and time functions, subqueries, window functions, stored procedures, and more. SQL can be used to perform basic data manipulations and queries, as well as more sophisticated techniques like aggregation, calculation, pivoting, correlated subqueries, and recursive common table expressions (CTEs). Stored procedures in SQL allow you to save and reuse complex queries or scripts for maintenance and performance optimization. Query optimization is crucial for efficient data analysis with SQL. This involves using techniques like indexes, minimizing subqueries, avoiding SELECT *, using LIMIT, and more. Other areas of SQL performance tuning include database design optimization, server tuning, and hardware optimization.