SQL and Workgroup Databases:
The dramatic growth of PC LANs through the 1980s and 1990s created a new
opportunity for departmental or "workgroup" database management. The original
database systems focused on this market segment ran on IBM's OS/2 operating system.
In fact, SQL Server, now a key part of Microsoft's Windows strategy, originally made its
debut as an OS/2 database product. In the mid-1990s, Novell also made a concentrated
effort to make its NetWare operating system an attractive workgroup database server
platform. From the earliest days of PC LANs, NetWare had become established as the
dominant network operating system for file and print servers. Through deals with Oracle
and others, Novell sought to extend this leadership to workgroup database servers as
well.
The arrival of Windows NT on the workgroup computing scene was the catalyst that
caused the workgroup database market to really take off. While NetWare offered a clear
performance advantage over NT as a workgroup file server, NT had a more robust,
general-purpose architecture, more like the minicomputer operating systems. Microsoft
successfully positioned NT as a more attractive platform for running workgroup
applications (as an "application server") and workgroup databases. Microsoft's own SQL
Server product was marketed (and often bundled) with NT as a tightly integrated
workgroup database platform. Corporate information systems departments were at first
very cautious about using relatively new and unproven technology, but the NT/SQL
Server combination allowed departments and non-IS executives to undertake smallerscale,
workgroup-level projects on their own, without corporate IS help. This
phenomenon, like the grass roots support for personal computers a decade earlier,
fueled the early growth of the workgroup database segment.
Today, SQL is well established as a workgroup database standard. Microsoft's SQL
Server has been joined by Oracle, Informix, Sybase, DB2, and many other DBMS brands
running on the Windows NT/Windows 2000 platform. Windows-based SQL databases
are the second largest segment of the DBMS market and are the fastest growing. From
this solid dominance in the workgroup segment, Windows-based server systems are
mounting a continued assault on enterprise-class database applications, slowly but surely
eating into low-end Unix-based database deployments.
