Continuing with the discussion of the SQL Server in the previous post, we are now going to enumerate the different versions that it took over the years, beginning with the first versions until SQL Server 2005.
SQL Server 1.0
This system started when Sybase Corporation sold the code base for MS SQL Server to Microsoft. This was what the company used in competing with Oracle and IBM when it comes to the enterprise-level database market. In 1989, the SQL Server 1.0 was released for the use of OS/2. This was actually a collaboration between Microsoft, Ashton-Tate and Sybase. This beginning resulted in the creation of the Microsoft SQL Server 4.2 (1992), Microsoft SQL Server 4.21 for Windows NT (1993), Microsoft SQL Server v6.0 (exclusively from Microsoft in 1995), SQL Server v7.0 (1998), and SQL Server 2000 (2000).
All of these versions contains a portion of the original Sybase code base. But since Microsoft and Sybase parted ways in 1993, Microsoft slowly did changes in the original code base. After the release of the SQL Server 2000, advancements have been created that included the ETL (extract-transform-load) tool, Reporting Server, OLAP and data mining server, and messaging technologies (Notification Services and Service Broker).
SQL Server 2005
This version was released in October 2005 and it included the advances that was made after SQL Server 2000. This version included the following features:
- Native support to manage XML data and relational data
- Defined XML data type to allow it to be used in database columns or as literals in queries
- Conversion of XML into an internal binary data type to allow database storage in specialized indexing
- Query of XML data using XQuery
- Extensions to T-SQL language to permit the embedding of XQuery queries in T-SQL
- Addition of XML DML, a new extension to XQuery that permits query-based modifications to XML data
- Permits the exposure of the database server over web services through the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) packets that are encapsulated in requests for SOAP (protocol)
- CLR (Common Language Runtime) integration to allow writing of SQL code and managed by the CLR
- Error handling features and recursive queries support for CTEs (Common Table Expressions) augmented in T-SQL
- Enhanced with new index algorithms, syntax and improved error recovery systems
- Data pages with better error resiliency and optimistic concurrency support to improve performance
- More granular permission and access control and efficient handling of concurrent query execution by the query processor
- Easier scaling of database through clusters because of the native support in index and table partitions
- SQL CLR allowing integration with the .NET Framework
- Introduction of the Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) that allows the use of database connections for different purposes
- Introduction of the Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) that allows the monitoring of server instance health, diagnosing of problems and tuning performance through specialized views and functions that return the server state information
- Introduction of Database Mirroring to allow redundancy and failover capabilities (both manual and automatic) of the database through high availability option
In the next article, we will be discussing the SQL Server 2008 versions.
Information credited to Wikipedia.org
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