"Sybase Inc. (NYSE: SY) is an enterprise software and services company. Sybase became the number two database system behind Oracle, after making a deal with Microsoft to share the source code for Microsoft to remarket on the OS/2 platform as "SQL Server". At the time, Sybase called the database server "Sybase SQL Server". Until version 4.9, Sybase and Microsoft SQL server were virtually identical. Due to disagreements between the two companies over revenue sharing (or lack thereof), Sybase and Microsoft decided to split the code-lines and went their own way, although the shared heritage is very evident in the Transact-SQL (T-SQL) procedural language as well as the basic process architecture. The big difference is that Sybase has a Unix heritage, while Microsoft SQL Server was adapted and optimized only for the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. Sybase continues to offer versions for Windows, several varieties of Unix, and for Linux." (
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