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ISO/IEC 9075 - SQL Standard

SQL-86 (or SQL-87)

SQL-87 is the ISO 9075:1987 standard of 1987
Some defined features of SQL-87 are
This standard is available as FIPS 127 / ANSI X3.135-1986 on archive.org (the link was posted on this dba.stackexchange.com answer).
This standard was based on System R.

SQL-89

SQL-89 is the ISO/IEC 9075:1989 standard of 1989
SQL-89 added foreign and primary key constraints.
This standard had about 120 pages.

SQL-92

SQL-92 is the ISO/IEC 9075:1992 standard of 1992.
SQL-92 added
SQL-92 mentions the four isolation levels (Read uncomitted, read comitted, repeatable read and serializable).
This standard had 628 pages.
In MS access, ANSI 92 syntax can be enabled under the menu File -> Options -> Object Designers -> Query Design -> SQL Server Compatible Syntax

SQL:1999

SQL:1999 is the ISO/IEC 9075:1999 standard of 1999.
SQL:1999 introduced the first of two collection types: the array. (These types apparently are also referred to as User Defined Types).
An amendment to SQL:1999 in 2000 added window functions. These were then incorporated into the SQL:2003 standard.
The full standard had about 2200 pages.

SQL:2003

SQL:2003 is the ISO/IEC 9075:2003 standard of 2003
SQL:2003 introduced the merge statement and the second of two collection types: the multiset.

Data types

Because of lack of support in existing database products, the bit and bit varying data types were removed from the standard. (However, SQL Server still has the bit datatype).
On the other hand, three new data types were added:

Columns

SQL 2003 also introduced
  • identity columns, and
  • generated columns

SQL:2006

SQL:2006 is the ISO/IEC 9075:2006 standard of 2006

SQL:2008

SQL:2008 is the ISO/IEC 9075:2008 standard of 2008
Many corrections.
SQL:2008 enhanced the merge statement.
SQL:2008 specifies 164 mandatory and 280 optional features.

SQL:2011

SQL:2011 is the ISO/IEC 9075:2011 standard of 2011
SQL:2011 added 34 new features to the SQL/Foundation part (all of which are optional). This brought the total of features in SQL/Foundation to 314.
This standard came with 4063 pages.
The possibly most important feature of SQL:2011 is the support for temporal databases. Other important features that come with SQL:2011 are
See Temporal features in SQL:2011 (by Krishna Kulkarni and Jan-Eike Michels covers the most important new functionality that is part of SQL:2011: the ability to create and manipulate temporal tables and Fred Zemke: What's new in SQL:2011.
See also: Final Draft (not to be used for reference purposes)

SQL:2016

SQL:2016 is the ISO/IEC 9075:2016 standard of 2016
With the exception of part 2, SQL:2016 did not significantly change from the previous version.
The most important new features in SQL:2016 are

Support for JSON

Unlike SQL/XML (Part 14), JSON was not put in its own part - yet, it is still referred to as SQL/JSON.
SQL:2016 does not define a new data type for JSON - it is stored in an SQL string type (for example varchar or clob).
See also the technical report ISO/IEC TR 19075-6:2017

Row pattern recognition (RPR)

Row pattern recognition is kind of applying regular expressions across sequences of rows.
See also the technical report ISO/IEC TR 19075-5:2016 and features R010 and R020.

Polymorphic table functions (PTF)

Parameters and function return values can be tables whose shape is not known until query time.
The feature ID for PTFs is B200.
See also the technical report ISO/IEC TR 19075-7:2017

SQL:2019

SQL:2019 added a part 15: Multidimensional arrays (MDA)

SQL:2020

JTC 1/SC 32/WG 3 identified the following areas of interest for the next (as of 2020-02) SQL standard:

SQL:2023

SQL:2023 has some improvements in the following three areas:

Parts of the standard

The SQL standard is published in multiple volumes (aka parts). Currently, these volumes are 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 14. (Gaps because some parts were withdrawn in earlier versions of the standards and their numbers are not recycled).
The parts are
Part 16 will define how GQL (Graph Query Language) will be made accessible to SQL. If such a part will be added is (as of July 2019) still being discussed.

Part 2

The largest and most importand part is part 2: foundations. In SQL:2011, it had 1470 pages.
It covers
  • Data types
  • DDL
  • Querying: select, join etc.
  • DML: insert, update, delete, merge …
  • Access Control: grant, revoke
  • Transaction control: commit, rollback, …
  • Connection management: connect, disconnect
  • Session management: set session
  • Exception handling: get diagnostics

Mandatory and optional features

The SQL standard covers a list of features which are put into one of categories
These features are listed in Annex F of each part of the standard.
An SQL implementation is called conformant if it implements all mandatory features.
It might add any optional feature.
Features seem to be numbered with (F|S|T)\d\d\d (for example F314 is merge statement with DELETE branch).

Not freely publicly available

ISO and/or(?) IEC only publishes the informative sections of the standard publicly and freely. The rest needs to be purchased.

Technical reports

Starting in 2011, the SQL Standards committees have published 7 (as of 2020-02) technical reports. They don't belong to the standard but are nevertheless a good read.
The technical reports include:
The next(?) technical report seems to be:
These technical reports are free for single use and can be downloaded here.

Misc

The SQL standard does not have a create database statement. In fact, the SQL standard does neither define nor use the word database (except for constructs like «database application» or «database access» and in its title).
The SQL standard also does not have a create index statement.

TODO

X3H2 is the ANSI database committee.

See also

Notes about the history of SQL.

Links

Ron Savage's github repository SQL contains the BNF Grammars for SQL-92, SQL-99 and SQL-2003.

Index