Executing SQL Server Stored Procedure from Perl - History Lesson: SQL Server(s)

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SQL Server was a product that originated from Sybase Inc., and became a popular DBMS product on the market from the end of 1980s.  In the early days Sybase SQL Server was running on the UNIX platform while PCs still used MS DOS (single task OS) – an operating system which was not suitable to develop and run a DBMS.
          
In 1987, Sybase and Microsoft signed a contract on joint development to port SQL Server to OS/2 (Multi-task OS) which became the replacement for MS DOS (OS/2 owned by both IBM and Microsoft). The OS/2 project did not continue for long, and Microsoft decided to develop its own multi-task operating system (Windows) and stop its contract with IBM. In 1990, with the successful release of Windows 3.0, Microsoft also released its Windows version of SQL Server – Microsoft SQL Server.

Milestones for MS SQL Server:

• MS SQL Server 4.2 (16-bits, Jan. 1992)
  
• MS SQL Server for Windows NT (32-bits, July, 1993)
  
• MS SQL Server 6.0 (June, 1995)
  
• MS SQL Server 6.5 (April, 1996)
  
• MS SQL Sever 7.0 (Nov. 1998)
  
• MS SQL Server 2000 (Aug. 2000)

At the same time, Sybase dominated the Unix DBMS market.  From Sybase SQL Server 4.2 (released around 1989, introduced unions), Version 4.8 (1990, introduced multiprocessor architecture), Version 4.9 (1992, more stable product, support SMP) Version 10 (1993, introduced server-side cursor, auditing and backup server), Version 11, Sybase Adaptive Server 12, until today: Sybase Adaptive Server 12.5.

Although in 1994, Microsoft and Sybase announced the end of the contract on joint SQL Server Development, MS SQL Server 6.5 and Sybase SQL Server 10 and all their previous versions used the same core code and were easily able to access each other.

MS SQL Server 7.0 changed completely from its previous version and was no longer compatible with Sybase SQL Server. But, with the release of Service Pack 2 for SQL Server 7.0 (Microsoft Knowledge Base Article – 239883 “Fix: SYBASE CT-Library Clients Cannot Connect to Microsoft SQL Server 7.0”) we had one last chance to access MS SQL Server 7.0 from the Sybase Client (Sybase SQL Server was more compatible with MS SQL Server, as you could successfully access Sybase SQL Server from the MS SQL Server 2000 client, iSQL).

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