Another obvious advantage is that the extended relational approach preserves the
significant body of knowledge and experience that has gone into developing relational
applications. This is a significant advantage, as many organizations would find it prohibitively
expensive to change. If the new functionality is designed appropriately, this
approach should allow organizations to take advantage of the new extensions in an evolutionary
way without losing the benefits of current database features and functions. Thus,
an ORDBMS could be introduced in an integrative fashion, as proof-of-concept projects.
The SQL:2003 standard is designed to be upwardly compatible with the SQL2 standard,
and so any ORDBMS that complies with SQL:2003 should provide this capability.