SQL-Retriever ODBC

Background

SQL-Retriever started life at a UK company in Leeds called VisionWare (which arose out of a management buy-out of Systime). Originally the product had another title which might have infringed one of the big database player's copyright, so the name was changed. The inspiration for the Retriever name came (wait for it) from the fact that one of employees of the company had a Golden Retriever that was seen around the office. This same rationale holds good for one of the (former) icons in the product (a dog) and the title of the sample application (SQL-Gold).

SQL-Retriever started as a DDE driver, but adopted ODBC when it emerged as an ANSI standard. SQL-Retriever also has a JDBC interface.

About 1994, SQL-Retriever was one of VisionWare's three products (the other two being PC-Connect and XVision). All three products were Windows-Unix connectivity products. PC-Connect was a terminal emulator and later grew into TermVision. XVision was an X-terminal emulator. All three products were united into the Vision Family (first as "Vision 97" then as "Vision2K") and sat on top of Vision Services: a situation that never really worked for SQL-Retriever which as a result was too bulky when it previously had the smallest footprint of any of the products in the suite and any of the ODBC drivers on the market at the time.

List of SQL-Retriever versions
Vision version	Vision version	SQL-Retriever version
Vision97	1.2	4.15
	1.3	4.16
Vision2K	2.0	4.17
	2.1	4.18

As at August 2003, the latest (and probably final) version to be produced is SQL-Retriever 4.18. It is available on Vision2K v2.1 (SCO labeled) CD, but was dropped from the Vision2K v2.1 (Tarantella labeled) CDs.

Corporate timeline:

VisionWare was bought ("merged") by SCO in 1994, and became the SCO Client Integration Division, and the products became known collectively as SCO Vision family. Investment in the Vision family - and SQL-Retriever in particular - was wound down in favour of the new technologies in the form of Tarantella (a web interface for anywhere-Unix integration) and the Vision family became the poorer cousin of the relationship. SQL-Retriever was ditched from the Vision Family and support stopped in about 2001. The SCO name had a mobile time after 2000 (related elsewhere).
In 2001, Tarantella (& the Vision family such as it was) was hived off as an independent entity, while the SCO brand itself was taken over by Caldera.
In 2002, Caldera (resumed?) started trading under the SCO label.
In July 2005, Tarantella was bought by Sun Microsystems.
In April 2009, Sun was bought by Oracle (funny how things come back to where they started, databases and all that....)