1970 Dr. E.F. Codd creates the concept of the Relational Database using tabular structure.
1974 IBM started it’s SEQUEL-XRM project.
1976 IBM anounced SEQUEL/2.
1977 IBM anounced SYSTEM/R.
1978 Customers test System/R from IBM.
1979 Oracle anounces the first Relational Database Management System.
1981 Relational Technology anounces Ingres. IBM anounces SQL/DS.
1982 ANSI starts it’s SQL standards committee.
1983 IBM anounces DB2.
1986 ANSI SQL-86 (SQL1) standard published.Sybase anounces it’s Relational Database Management System.
1987 ISO SQL1 standard ratified. Date and time column definitions added by IBM.
1988 Microsoft and Ashton-Tate anounce SQL Server for OS/2. IBM added referential integrity.
1989 ANSI SQL-89 standard published. Distributed relational database anounced by IBM in DB2 version 2.2.
1991 SQL Access Group database access specification published. Math precision increased from 15 to 30 digits by IBM DB2.
1992 ANSI SQL-92 (SQL2) standard published which is a major revision.
1993 ODBC is anounced.
1994 Parallel database server shipped.
1997 IBM DB2 UDB unifies DB2 and other vendor databases. Java integration strategies anounced.
1998 Microsoft SQL Server 7 for Windows NT anounced. Oracle 8i for internet/database provides alternative to client/server.
1999 ANSI SQL:1999 (SQL3) standard published. J2EE standardizes JDBC database access.
2000 Microsoft anounces SQL Server 2000.
2001 XML integration anounced. IBM acquires Informix.
2003 ANSI SQL:2003 standard published. Introduced XML-related features, window functions, standardized sequences.
2005 Microsoft anounces SQL Server 2005.
2006 ANSI SQL:2006 standard published for storing XML data in an SQL database and use of XQuery by W3C standards.