Content Summary : SQL standards have been the most popular and enduring standards incomputing. Although information processing has become increasingly moresophisticated and more complex over the past decades, SQL has continuallyevolved to meet the growing demands. As the latest version of SQL standards, SQL 2003 is making majorimprovements in a number of key areas. First, there are additional object-relational features, which were first introduced in SQL 1999. Second, SQL 2003standard revolutionizes SQL with comprehensive OLAP features. Third, SQL2003 delivers a brand new Part 14 for XML-Related Specifications (SQL/XML)to integrate popular XML standards into SQL. Finally, there are numerousimprovements throughout the SQL 2003 standard to refine existing features. As the first commercial implementation of SQL over 25 years ago, Oraclecontinues to lead the database industry in implementing SQL standards. In fact,many of the SQL 2003 new features had already been supported since OracleDatabase 8/8i (Multisets, OLAP functions, etc.), Oracle Database 9i (additionalOLAP functions, Table functions, Nested collection types, Final structuredtypes, etc.) or Oracle Database 9i Release 2 (SQL/XML features). The latestOracle Database 10g supports additional SQL 2003 new features (advanced Multiset support) as well as several new SQL capabilities beyond the currentSQL 2003 standard (e.g., additional statistical functions, regular expressions),making Oracle Database 10g the best implementation of SQL standards.