The International Organization for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 1, Information Technology, Subcommittee (SC) 32, Data management and interchange, published nine updated parts of the SQL Query Language (SQL) Database Language standard, ISO/IEC 9075:2016, Information technology - Database languages - SQL in December 2016. SQL is a data sublanguage widely used for access to relational databases.
Major new features in the update include Row Pattern Recognition, Support for Java Script Object Notation (JSON) objects, Polymorphic Table Functions, and Additional analytics.
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is the U.S. member body to ISO, and the IEC, via the U.S. National Committee. The U.S. plays a leading role in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32, with Michaela Miller of ANSI serving as the SC 32 Secretariat and Jim Melton of Oracle Corporation serving as SC 32 Chair, through 2017. The ANSI-accredited U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) administrator to SC 32 is the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS).
The nine updated parts of ISO/IEC 9075:2016 focus on the following aspects of SQL:
Part 1:Conceptual framework, grammar, and terms and notation used in other parts of ISO/IEC 9075
Part 2:Foundation, data structures, and basic operations on SQL-data
Part 3: Call-level interface
Part 4: Persistent stored modules
Part 9: Management of external data
Part 10: Object language bindings
Part 11: Information and definition schemas
Part 13: SQL routines and types using the Java programming language
Part 14: XML-related specifications
SQL: 2016 adds support for additional analytical capabilities including Trigonometric and Logarithm functions. The Trigonometric functions included are sine, cosine, tangent, hyperbolic sine, hyperbolic cosine, hyperbolic tangent, inverse sine, inverse cosine, and inverse tangent.
For more details on the newest edition of the SQL Database Language standard, see the technical summary.
About ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32 is responsible for 77 published standards works with 14 participating countries (and 23 observing countries) to provide enabling technologies to promote harmonization of data management facilities across sector-specific areas. Specifically, SC 32 standards include:
Reference models and frameworks for the coordination of existing and emerging standards;
Definition of data domains, data types, and data structures, and their associated semantics;
Languages, services, and protocols for persistent storage, concurrent access, concurrent update, and interchange of data; and
Methods, languages, services, and protocols to structure, organize, and register metadata and other information resources associated with sharing and interoperability, including electronic commerce.
ANSI holds the secretariat of SC 32's parent committee, ISO/IEC JTC 1, with the U.S.'s Karen Higginbottom serving as chair.