SQL: 1999, formerly known as SQL3

For several years now, you've been hearing and reading about an emerging standard that everybody has been calling SQL3. Intended as a major enhancement of the current second generation SQL standard, commonly called SQL-92 because of the year it was published, SQL3 was originally planned to be issued in about 1996…but things didn't go as planned.

As you may be aware, SQL3 has been characterized as “object-oriented SQL” and is the foundation for several object-relational database management systems (including Oracle's ORACLE8, Informix' Universal Server, IBM's DB2 Universal Database, and Cloudscape's Cloudscape, among others). This is widely viewed as a “good thing”, but it has had a downside, too: it took nearly 7 years to develop, instead of the planned 3 or 4.

As we shall show, SQL:1999 is much more than merely SQL-92 plus object technology. It involves additional features that we consider to fall into SQL's relational heritage, as well as a total restructuring of the standards documents themselves with an eye towards more effective standards progression in the future.