SQL University: History Week Pt. 1

Well this is going to be an interesting week as we have the PASS Summit going on. What’s the PASS Summit? What’s PASS? Why are the people on Twitter so excited about #sqlpass? Well by the end of the week my hope is you’ll have an understanding of where the Microsoft SQL Server (the product) came from, where its going, what PASS is and why its important to us.

So the past few weeks you’ve been working with Microsoft SQL Server. Some of you may have worked with it for years and others may be using it for the first time. So how did this fantastic relational database product come to be? Microsoft SQL Server’s humble beginnings started in 1989 with the release of SQL Server 1.0. This was Microsoft’s first entry in to the database market and the product’s codebase was based on Sybase SQL Server 3.0 code.Eventually Sybase and Microsoft went their separate ways. Starting from version SQL Server 7.0, released in 1998, the codebase was re-written from the legacy Sybase code.

In 2000 Microsoft released the first version that did away with the previous numbering scheme and was released as (and the originality award goes to…) SQL 2000. This product marked the first time the product was available with an edition aimed at the IA-64 architecture. The IA-64 version of SQL 2000 was available some time after the x86 version. It was also a little finicky, being more prone to crashes than the x86 edition (thanks to Gail Shaw for this info!). This evolution of the product also saw the introduction of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) as an add-on in 2004. Reporting Services would re-emerge in SQL Server 2005 with many improvements in regards to end-user tools, self-service ad-hoc reporting and ease-of-usability. This release also gave us a built-in ETL (extract,transform,load) tool called Data Transformation Services (DTS).

For the 2005 release, SQL Server 2005 was considered a revolutionary release by many. Quite a few things were overhauled and improved upon. The Enterprise Manager was replaced by the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). SSMS is basically a Visual Studio shell with SQL Server components built in which made for a cohesive development/management environment for users. As well as getting a new management interface there were huge new features and enhancements to the database engine itself. SQL Server 2005 was the first SQL Server to include support for managing XML data types. Some other improvements 2005 brought were better indexing algorithms, better recovery systems, Dynamic Management Views, instant file initialization, better security (granular role/schema/object permissions), introduction of SQL CLR which allows developers to use native .NET code within SQL Server (assuming your DBA allows it, hehehe). Another huge change in this release was the replacement of DTS with a far superior and more polished ETL solution in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS).

The most recent iteration of the product is SQL Server 2008. This version built upon the leaps from its previous release and improved upon them. These improvements came in the form of new features such as Policy-Based Management, the Performance Data Collector, data compression, resource governor (which allows dba’s to restrict resources for certain queries), transparent data encryption, data auditing, server group management in the form of the Central Management Server, the introduction of the MERGE statement, introduction of LINQ, support for geospatial data, filtered indexes, new DATE/TIME data types (until this point date/time was one column and together, this release allowed you to separate the two), BI improvements, and much more.

So what’s next? Glad you asked! The next announced release is referred to as SQL Server 2008 R2. This release offers mostly higher spec bumps (such as support for more processors, more memory, etc.) but also offers a few new feature additions as well. Some of these new features include Master Data Services, SQL Server Utility (a new way of managing databases as Data-Tier Applications), Data-Tier Application capabilities (DAC), PowerPivot (formerly known as Project Gemini) and more. Here’s a full list of all the various improvements available in the R2 release.

Note: This article was heavily drawn upon entries from Wikipedia. Click here to read the full SQL Server entry from there.

Continue on to part II