Ed Esber and Bill Gates introduced SQL Server to the world in a joint New York press conference. The basic idea was to use SQL Server as a back-end and dBASE as the front-end, allowing the existing dBASE market to use their forms and programming knowledge on top of a SQL system. SQL Server was actually a product developed by Sybase corporation, which Microsoft had licensed. From a business perspective this had little direct effect on the company, at least in the short term.