The infancy

Microsoft entered the database management systems market, which was dominated by IBM and Oracle, in 1989 with the introduction of MS SQL Server 1.0 for OS2. This early version of the MS SQL Server was the result of the collaboration between Microsoft, Sybase and Ashton-Tate. This version of MS SQL Server was very similar to Sybase's SQL Server 3.0 for Unix and VMS.

Parting ways with Sybase

With the release of MS SQL Server 4.21 for Windows NT Microsoft and Sybase parted ways to pursue their own design and marketing efforts. Microsoft obtained exclusive rights to all versions of MS SQL server that were written for Microsoft's own operating systems. Around 1994 Microsoft dropped the Sybase copyright notices that had accompanied the products from its start.

Becoming a serious contender

While Microsoft was making some inroad in the enterprise market it wasn't until the release of SQL Server version 7 that big enterprises started taking Microsoft seriously. SQL Server 7 which was a complete rewrite away from the legacy Sybase code represented significant improvements compared to its predecessor SQL Server 6.5 both in terms of performance and reliability.

Maturing

With the release of SQL Server 2000 Microsoft was no longer the underdog of the database market - it started expanding rapidly into the enterprise market touted as being on par with Oracle and DB2 for performance, reliability, scalability and functionality while providing a significantly lower cost of ownership or cost per transaction.

On November 2005 Microsoft released SQL Server 2005 which between other things brought a tight integration with the Visual Studio 2005 which was released at the same time, Analysis Services for OLAP and data mining, reporting services etc.

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