Indeed my examples are simple. However this was the problem: there was no tool around to easily answer those simple questions. Now there is... at least one that fits my arbitrary definitions of what such a tool should do.

Hopefully having a tool to ask these simple queries will give rise to smarter questions, which will either prompt the development of custom dashboards or improvements in the tool itself.

I agree in theory that "business people", if and when they start asking these questions, can and should learn SQL. However my experience seems to point the other way. They'll ask the developer to do more and more reports, eventually hiring someone for the "data analyst" role.