At the time, my basic experience with databases had been for normal developer CRUD type operations. I was just getting into BI analytics and stuff. MySql was kind of the defacto choice for a "free" database and it was kind of thrown at me. I didn't mind since I had used it for years and was familiar with setting it up. But no, assuming the thing with "SQL" in its name didn't actually support SQL was not on my checklist sadly.
Did you not research this beforehand?