The announcement that the stalwart of Microsoft’s database platform is coming to Linux shouldn’t be a surprise. In fact I am surprised they took so long ! The statement regarding future developments of SQL 2016 here show the future direction of the platform and if combined with recent acquisitions of Xamarin and other companies shows the intent to take on the incumbent Oracle MySQL as the defacto database for the non specialist Linux application.
No doubt we will hear more about the intended functionality of the application on the Linux OS – there is a link from the article to sign up for the preview and to keep up to date with progress. Another choice in the application data layer is no bad thing but it remains to see how/if Microsoft pull this one off.