Are BACKUP and RESTORE really that complicated? Compared to, for example, limitations on recursive common table expressions or all the tricks you can perform with MERGE and OUTPUT? Backup and disaster recovery are arguably the most important part of a DBA's job, so we should expect it to take some effort to master. It may be difficult because the commands are boring, haven't changed much in years, and kind of scary because if you get them wrong it could cost you your job. These commands have so many options because there are so many backup & recovery scenarios, but they separate real DBAs from the .Net developers and recent Access graduates.

The simpler you make it, the larger the population of morons who think they're qualified to do it. If you have a week-old full backup, a day-old diff backup, and a hundred transaction log backups since then, all you have to do is open the Restore task and give it a time and it will figure out all the necessary commands. Unfortunately, that makes some people think they're experts. If they know how to get the GUI to script all the commands, and take credit for writing them, they're wizards.

I've been monitoring a project in development where a "Senior DBA" has done over a dozen backups over the course of a week without realizing they were overwriting the same backup file every time (not even appending it!). They know how to click the GUI buttons, but without any real understanding. Giving this person more pushbutton capability to screw things up scares me.