Two years ago there was a business decision to put SQL Server on Linux; so, as the engineering team, we have to figure out the “How” part. The task is technically challenging: tens of millions of lines of code that continues growing on a monthly basis, with over 500 developers working on it. The Drawbridge project, which I became familiar with while working at Microsoft Research on the Midori operating system, allows Windows applications to be compartmentalized and run in a wrapper environment.

Although, initially, Drawbridge was designed to allow high density applications to run in the cloud, and to provide security for applications running there, it turned out it could also be used as a platform abstraction layer, PAL, to bring Windows native applications to other platforms. Drawbridge was used as a key part to make SQL Server run on Linux.