Morgan Stanley & Co’s software watchers hear that Microsoft Corp’s SQL Server 7.0, aka Sphinx, won’t ship until late 1998, a much later delivery date than the Wall Street investment bank had been hearing only a month ago. It thinks Sphinx’s slippage – the database was once slated to appear as SQL Server 97 – extends Oracle’s window of opportunity for high end. It expects the database industry to grow at a rate of 20% a year and that Oracle’s server growth will be around that figure. It thinks even SQLServer’s momentum is slowing down a bit.