Slava Oaks is back blogging and gives us some insight on how SQL Server on Linux came to be:
To give you an idea of the effort involved, the SQL Server RDBMS and other services that ship with it in the SQL Server product suite account for more than 40 million lines of C++ code. Even though SQL Server has a resource management layer called SQLOS, the codebase bleeds Win32 semantics throughout. This means a pure port could take years just to get compiling and booting let alone figuring out things like performance and feature parity with SQL Server on Windows. In addition, doing a porting project while other SQL Server innovation is happening in the same codebase would have been a daunting task and keep the team in a close to endless catch-up game.
In conclusion, even though the potential job-offer intrigued me, it felt like an impossible task for one to take on.
It’s a great story, one which I never would have thought possible six years ago.