We investigate the properties of a simple programming language whose main computational engine is structural recursion on sets. We describe a progression of sublanguages in this paradigm that (1) have increasing expressive power, and (2) illustrate robust conceptual restrictions thus exhibiting interesting additional properties. These properties suggest that we consider our sublanguages as candidates for "query languages". Viewing query languages as restrictions of our more general programming language has several advantages. First, there is no "impedance mismatch" problem; the query languages are already there, so they share common semantic foundation with the general language. Second, we suggest a uniform characterization of nested relational and complex-object algebras in terms of some surprisingly simple operators; and we can make comparisons of expressiveness in a general framework. Third, we exhibit differences in expressive power that are not always based on complexity arguments...