1970

• Edgar Codd proposed the relational model for databases.

1974

• Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce developed SQL.
• IBM released System R.
• Michael Stonebraker and Eugene Wong developed Ingres.

1979

• Oracle developed Oracle Database.

1985

• Informix released INFORMIX-SQL.

1986

• ANSI and then ISO published the SQL standard.

1987

• Sybase developed Sybase SQL Server.

1988

• Microsoft partnered with Sybase and Ashton-Tate to develop SQL Server for OS/2.

1989

• Micrsoft released SQL Server.

1994

• David Hughes released Mini SQL.

1995

• UC Berkeley released Postgres95.

1996

• Michael Widenius and David Axmark developed MySQL.

2009

• Widenius and Axmark released MariaDB.