I'm just saying they are not declarative since you have to
explicitly describe how each table is joined to the next, the operation goes beyond the query itself.
I think we have different definitions of "declarative", since I consider SQL's join syntax to be pretty darn declarative. You're declaring the relationship between two tables. You're not telling the database how to spool through each table and match up values; you're just telling it which values need to match up by which constraints.
I'm just saying they are not declarative since you have to explicitly describe how each table is joined to the next, the operation goes beyond the query itself.