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SQL Server 2005 is the latest version of a database server product that has been
evolving since the late 1980s. Microsoft SQL Server originated as Sybase SQL Server in
1987. In 1988, Microsoft, Sybase, and Aston-Tate ported the product to OS/2. Later,
Aston-Tate dropped out of the SQL Server development picture, and Microsoft and
Sybase signed a co-development agreement to port SQL Server to Windows NT. The co
-development effort cumulated in the release of SQL Server 4.0 for Windows NT. After
the 4.0 release, Microsoft and Sybase split on the development of SQL Server; Microsoft
continued forward with future releases targeted for the Windows NT platform while
Sybase moved ahead with releases targeted for the UNIX platform, which they still
market today. SQL Server 6.0 was the first release of SQL Server that was developed
entirely by Microsoft. In 1996, Microsoft updated SQL Server with the 6.5 release. After a
two-year development cycle, Microsoft released the vastly updated SQL Server 7.0
release in 1998. SQL Server 7.0 embodied many radical changes in the underlying
storage and database engine technology used in SQL Server. SQL Server 2000, the
accumulation of another two-year development effort, was released in September of
2000. The move from SQL Server 7.0 to SQL Server 2000 was more of an evolutionary
move that didn�t entail the same kinds of massive changes that were made in the move
from 6.5 to 7.0. Instead, SQL Server 2000 built incrementally on the new code base that
was established in the 7.0 release. Starting with SQL Server 2000, Microsoft began
releasing updates to the basic release of SQL Server in the following year starting with
XML for SQL Server Web Release 1, which added several XML features including the
ability to receive a result set as an XML document. The next year they renamed the web
release to the more succinctly titled SQLXML 2.0, which, among other things, added the
ability to update the SQL Server database using XML updategrams. This was quickly
followed by the SQLXML 3.0 web release, which included the ability to expose stored
procedures as web services. Two years later, Microsoft SQL Server release history
cumulates with the release of SQL Server 2005. SQL Server 2005 uses the same basic
architecture that was established with SQL Server 7 and it adds to this all the features
introduced with SQL Server 2000 and its web releases in conjunction with the integration
of the .NET CLR and an array of powerful new BI functions. The following timeline
summarizes the development history of SQL Server:
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