What are the implications of the June 2020 ArcGIS Online Standardized SQL Query Enforcement?

Answer

Standardized SQL queries will be enforced for all organizations starting with the June 2020 ArcGIS Online update.

ArcGIS Online requires developers to use standardized SQL queries when querying hosted feature layers. This makes it easier and more secure to query hosted feature layers, and helps prevent SQL injection attacks. All ArcGIS applications automatically support standard SQL queries.

Standardized SQL queries abstract the SQL syntax accepted by ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online away from vendor-specific syntax and toward a generic vendor-agnostic syntax. In most cases, users who require the standardized SQL query option to be disabled are working with services hosted on stand-alone, third-party, OGC-compliant providers or by services from ArcGIS Enterprise, which require database vendor-specific query syntax. 

Standardized SQL queries have been enforced by default since September 2018. Starting with the ArcGIS Online June 2020 update, Standard SQL queries are required for hosted feature layers.

Customers with ArcGIS Online organizations established prior to mid-September 2018 may have disabled this setting to allow nonstandard queries for hosted feature layers. In some cases, older applications that were built to support legacy, custom, or 3rd-party components may not support standardized SQL queries. Those applications must be updated to use standard SQL queries after June 2020 update.

What to do if your ArcGIS Online organization has currently disabled the standardized SQL query setting

If your organization has legacy, custom, or third-party applications that can query data, we suggest that you confirm those applications are using standard SQL syntax. To validate this, enable the standardized SQL query settings in your organization and test that your applications function as expected. This setting may be disabled before the June 2020 ArcGIS Online update to provide time to address the query patterns used by affected apps. 

To enable the standardized query option, log in your ArcGIS Online organization as an administrator, go to Organization > Settings > Security > Policies > SQL queries, and turn on the option Allow only standard SQL queries. The Configure Security Settings section of the ArcGIS Online Administration documentation has more information about this setting. 

Note:
Once the June 2020 ArcGIS Online update occurs, the option to disable standardized queries will no longer be available on  the Organization Settings page.