I’m not sure it’s a feature that you MUST think about the execution model even for trivial things :-) but that you can and should is certainly a strength.
It's really not different from any other programming language, I think Prolog is just held to a higher standard, and I think that might be due to a misconception.
Also, XSB Prolog and SLG resolution[1] should be mentioned. It solves some of the problems with Prolog that force you to think about the execution model when you'd rather not. To some extent, this can be thought of as getting the good parts of both Datalog and Prolog.
SLG resolution was introduced in SWI-Prolog as well fairly recently[2].
