SQL overview

[kbatuigas]

Description

This pull request significantly expands and restructures the Redpanda SQL documentation to provide a clearer, more comprehensive overview for users. The changes introduce new sections describing key concepts, use cases, and architectural characteristics, while also updating navigation to reflect these improvements and future planned content.

Key documentation improvements:

Content expansion and clarification:

• The what-is-redpanda-sql.adoc page is rewritten to clarify Redpanda SQL's purpose, supported query patterns (including querying Kafka topics, Iceberg tables, and "bridge queries"), and primary use cases. It now includes explicit learning objectives and a more detailed explanation of the engine's architecture and resource efficiency. [1] [2]
• The page now highlights Redpanda SQL's compatibility with PostgreSQL syntax and clients, and explains its read-only nature and catalog-based data exposure.

Information architecture and navigation updates:

• The navigation file (nav.adoc) is updated to reflect the new structure, including placeholders for future documentation on getting started, querying data, and managing Redpanda SQL. New sections for "Query data" and "Manage Redpanda SQL" are introduced.
• "Get Started" and related quickstart and enablement topics are now grouped for easier discovery.

Technical and architectural details:

• Expanded sections on Redpanda SQL's architecture cover vectorized query execution, columnar storage, decoupled storage and compute, distributed design, and PostgreSQL protocol compatibility, with emphasis on resource efficiency and low-level optimizations.
• The documentation now explains how Redpanda SQL achieves scalability and supports diverse analytical workloads in a unified system.

Next steps and user guidance:

• New "Next steps" links guide users to quickstart, connection, and reference documentation, as well as conceptual comparisons with OLTP and PostgreSQL.

These changes collectively make the Redpanda SQL documentation more approachable and useful for new and existing users, while laying groundwork for future content expansion.

Resolves https://github.com/redpanda-data/documentation-private/issues/
Review deadline:

Page previews

Checks

• New feature
• Content gap
• Support Follow-up
• Small fix (typos, links, copyedits, etc)

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