Why isn't SQL ANSI-92 standard better adopted over ANSI-89?

Question

At every company I have worked at, I have found that people are still writing their SQL queries in the ANSI-89 standard:

select a.id, b.id, b.address_1
from          


        

Answer 1

Inertia and practicality.

ANSI-92 SQL is like touch-typing. In some theoretical way it might make everything better someday, but I can type much faster looking at the keys with four fingers now. I would need to go backwards in order to go forwards, with no guarantee that there would ever be a pay-off.

Writing SQL is about 10% of my job. If I need ANSI-92 SQL to solve a problem that ANSI-89 SQL can't solve then I'll use it. (I use it in Access, in fact.) If using it all the time would help me solve my existing problems much faster, I'd spend the time to assimilate it. But I can whip out ANSI-89 SQL without ever thinking about the syntax. I get paid to solve problems--thinking about SQL syntax is a waste of my time and of my employer's money.

Someday, young Grasshopper, you'll be defending your use of ANSI-92 SQL syntax against young people whining that you should be using SQL3 (or whatever). And then you'll understand. :-)