For anyone unaware, SQL Server is a 'fork' of Sybase after an agreement between ...

dsp1234 · on March 7, 2016

At that point, "Sybase SQL Server version 4.2 and Microsoft SQL Server are identical."

Well, that's 23 years ago...

But even at mssql V7[0], most of the systems had internal rewrites that made them different than Sybase.

[0] - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/euanga/2006/01/19/sql-mythb...

atombender · on March 7, 2016

While true, it's a bit disingenuous to say this today. The fork happened 23 years ago, and the two products have diverged to the point where there's probably very little common code left.

As an aside, back in the early 2000s I was using the free version of Sybase ASE on Linux for webapps. It was great; painless to run and manage, and fast. Of course, MSSQL blew it out of the water even back then.

protomyth · on March 7, 2016

Sybase has not kept their end up to what Microsoft has been pushing in SQL Server. Transact-SQL is nicer on SQL Server and the last time I used Sybase the query planner was problematic to the point of needed to force loads of indexes.

yread · on March 7, 2016

I second that, we had to run a medium sized application on FusionIO cards because Sybase was just terrible at query optimization

protomyth · on March 8, 2016

We did a lot of monitoring and index forcing. We queried the system tables and go the current query plan for the statements running. We were already on one of the biggest boxes HP built (Superdome) with some fun fast storage for the db.

sixdimensional · on March 7, 2016

...and Sybase, which is a descendant of Ingres that also runs happily on Unix, Linux or Windows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres_(database)