Microsoft SQL Server on Linux on March, 2016. I was installed it as a toy and was impressed by the easy installation, just add a repository, then yum/apt-get install and that it!
Now, SQL Server 2017 on Linux became official GA. Restore the backup dump from Windows using SQL Management Studio, and changed the connection string, then your application is ready to go. So far, it’s fast and stable. Some benchmarks show the performance same as on Windows. So, how a native Windows application ported to Linux without performance lost? The magic is the SQL Server Operating System. SQL manages threads and memory by it own even on Windows, and it uses Drawbridge as a thin layer to call Linux native APIs.
Supporting Linux is a great advantage on cloud. With the exit of DB2, SQL Server on Linux surely can compete with Oracle DB, MySQL and PostgreSQL on cloud.
SQL Server 2017 on Linux 已正式推出。終於有時間認真試下。非常好，比 Windows 版更易安裝，坊間測驗結果 Linux 版效能同 Windows 版不相伯仲。背後功臣是 SQL Server Operation System 和 Drawbridge。Microsoft 走對了方向，因為雲是 Linux 世界，支援 Linux 後，SQL Server 在 DB2 棄權的情況下，可在雲世界同 Oracle DB / MySQL / PostgreSQL 爭一日長短。
References (English):
How Microsoft brought SQL Server to Linux
SQL Server 2017: What’s new, what’s missing on Linux, and what’s next?
How an old Drawbridge helped Microsoft bring SQL Server to Linux
參考 (中文)：
Windows是如何把SQL Server引入到Linux的