---
title: "Introducing ShopifyQL: Our New Commerce Data Querying Language"
description: "Shopify introduces ShopifyQL, a commerce-focused querying language intended to make data exploration accessible to Shopify Plus merchants without data science or coding backgrounds. It addresses the limits of dashboards and reports, which show what happened but may not explain why, and simplifies access to modeled commerce datasets that would otherwise require SQL and data-lifecycle knowledge. Its syntax uses clauses such as FROM, SHOW or VISUALIZE, BY, WHERE, SINCE, UNTIL, ORDER BY, COMPARE TO, and LIMIT, with direct charting, commerce-specific date ranges, and planned native period comparisons. ShopifyQL is available through the ShopifyQL Notebooks first-party app, while GraphQL APIs let partners submit queries and receive results from the underlying datasets. Shopify says it will use the language across Shopify Admin analytics and plans features including more visualizations, pivoting, and aggregate conditions."
---

# Introducing ShopifyQL: Our New Commerce Data Querying Language

[Shopify](https://yomu.fyi/company/shopify) · 2023-10-18 · Jun 22, 2022

**Type:** Announcement

## Summary

Shopify introduces ShopifyQL, a commerce-focused querying language intended to make data exploration accessible to Shopify Plus merchants without data science or coding backgrounds. It addresses the limits of dashboards and reports, which show what happened but may not explain why, and simplifies access to modeled commerce datasets that would otherwise require SQL and data-lifecycle knowledge. Its syntax uses clauses such as FROM, SHOW or VISUALIZE, BY, WHERE, SINCE, UNTIL, ORDER BY, COMPARE TO, and LIMIT, with direct charting, commerce-specific date ranges, and planned native period comparisons. ShopifyQL is available through the ShopifyQL Notebooks first-party app, while GraphQL APIs let partners submit queries and receive results from the underlying datasets. Shopify says it will use the language across Shopify Admin analytics and plans features including more visualizations, pivoting, and aggregate conditions.

## Context

Shopify says data exploration is often inaccessible to merchants without data science or coding backgrounds. Dashboards and reports help explain what happened but may not explain why, while custom exploration can require SQL, data engineering knowledge, spreadsheets, or support from centralized data teams.

## Approach / What changed

Shopify built ShopifyQL as an accessible, commerce-focused querying language for Shopify Plus merchants. It provides simplified syntax, direct visualization through VISUALIZE, commerce-specific date functions and ranges, datasets modeled for exploration, a planned COMPARE TO feature for period analysis, a ShopifyQL Notebooks app, and GraphQL APIs for partner applications.

## Takeaways

- ShopifyQL places FROM before SHOW so users select the dataset context before choosing fields, and it shortens traditional SELECT and GROUP BY concepts to SHOW and BY.
- The VISUALIZE keyword lets a query return chart or graph visualizations directly, while smart defaults can produce the same output with fewer lines of code.
- ShopifyQL is exposed through ShopifyQL Notebooks and GraphQL endpoints, allowing merchants to explore data and partners to submit queries against the underlying modeled datasets.

**Tags:** [Data Pipelines](https://yomu.fyi/topic/data-pipelines), [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [GraphQL](https://yomu.fyi/topic/graphql)

- Source: [Shopify](https://shopify.engineering/shopify-commerce-data-querying-language-shopifyql)
- Source URL: https://shopify.engineering/shopify-commerce-data-querying-language-shopifyql
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-08-30T15:25:49.147Z

[Read original post](https://shopify.engineering/shopify-commerce-data-querying-language-shopifyql)