One missing point on the acquisition front. Microsoft did not actually design and build SQLServer, Sybase did. MS "acquired" it in a round about sort of a way. True, they never purchased Sybase so there was no company acquisition, but the product was pure Sybase up until the time the partnership ended around '94 and MS conveniently owned the appropriate license for developing it on Windows. Ever thought why there is not a Unix/Linux version of it - they don't own the licence to write the code on any platform other than Windows. This acquisition seems to be missing from the list!! Do MS have any software that they actually thought of, designed and built all by themselves??

Although I make these points as a die hard Sybase dba, I actually think SQLServer is a very good products, certainly deserving of second place 😀