> But, sadly, the SQL standard itself is a proprietary document that you have to purchase! This is a massive problem with standards in general. ISO 8601, for e

> But, sadly, the SQL standard itself is a proprietary document that you have to purchase! This is a massive problem with standards in general. ISO 8601, for example, the international standard for date and time representation that everyone should be using, similarly consists of multiple documents that you have to purchase at significant prices. The part covering "basic rules" costs 158 CHF (160 USD) and the part covering "extensions" costs 178 CHF (180 USD). I think this is seriously hampering the adoption of standards outside of industries that explicitly require compliance, and particularly in open source. If you can't even know whether you're compliant without spending serious money, why care about compliance at all?