I guess sqlite + honeysql would be an alternative. Curious to know why the author prefers the relations/table/codd model over graph-map-databases like datomic and thinks something like datomic "feels out" of "out of the tarpit".

Mainly it is because the tar pit paper proposed the relational algebra in its functional relational programming.

I do think for some it might be easier to reason mechanically about dataflow through collection-oriented operators. But I suppose it's subjective.

clj-3df [1] to my understanding does something like Relic for datomic datalog using differential dataflow.

Disclaimer: I now work on XTDB [2], so datalog is somewhat now my day job.

[1] https://github.com/sixthnormal/clj-3df

[2] https://xtdb.com/