Updating a product sku

Is there really no way to update a product sku? When you create a product it does return a product ID, but then when retrieving product or updating product it can only be addressed by SKU instead, and I do not see ability to update SKU.

The alternative workaround looks messy. I would need to query the full inventory, delete existing product, create new product, then reassign that inventory data.

However then there is the issue of existing unfulfilled orders with that product. So then I would need to query all open orders with the old sku and update every order to the new product.

That sounds insane. The product’s do have a product ID, surely that is the primary column in the database and not a alphanumeric sku?