In 1970, when E. F. Codd came up with his seminal work A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks, his approach sounded like a purely theoretical one. Computers were not powerful enough to implement the relational database concepts in a manner that would suffice the needs of the consumers. However, in a few years, different corporations, such as IBM and Oracle, started building relational database management systems, and in a few more years, Oracle (known as Relational Software at that time) came up with the first RDBMS in 1979.

Microsoft jumped on to the bandwagon significantly later, after 10 more years had passed, partnering with Sybase, and developed their original version of SQL Server. In the beginning of 1990s, Microsoft negotiated exclusive rights to the SQL Server versions written for Windows; in 1998, they came up with SQL Server v7, which was the first version written in-house.

Over the years, Microsoft SQL Server has undergone a significant...