Bringing the Newly Approved GQL Project Into Focus

The ISO/IEC JTC1 Joint Technical Committee has approved a new declarative property graph query language, GQL, after a three-month New Project ballot closed on September 9, 2019. The approval reflects the growing interest in property graphs and prior work done before the project was requested. The GQL project will complement existing work in SC32 WG3 to add a new part to the SQL Standard, SQL/PGQ, defining how to integrate property graph queries within SQL queries and present relational data as property graphs. The standards development process has several steps and ballots that must be completed before GQL officially becomes a standard, with an estimated completion time of 2 or 2.5 years requiring significant effort from multiple people.