I'm just curious how people pronounce the name of the database query language. It seems like most people say Sequel, but I'll occasionally hear someone spell it out.
I pronounce it "sequel" because it was originally called "SEQUEL"
SQL was developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce in the early 1970s. This version, initially called SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language), was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original relational database management system, System R, which a group at IBM San Jose Research Laboratory had developed during the 1970s.[6] The acronym SEQUEL was later changed to SQL because "SEQUEL" was a trademark of the UK-based Hawker Siddeley aircraft company.
I suppose I look at it the other way...the makers intended for it to be called SEQUEL, and because of copyright issues, they changed it to SQL. It doesn't change the fact that they really wanted it to be SEQUEL. Similarly, I still call SciFi network SciFi and not SyFy, because the original name was SciFi, and they only changed it because of copyright issues.
It looks like the Sequel is winning in the poll vs S-Q-L too!
Sci Fi changed its name not because of copyright issues, but to distance themselves from science fiction. According to Wikipedia, the trademarkability of Syfy was of less import than the unambiguous spelling and the ability to justify 70% non-scifi content.
This is really interesting. IBM Legal would have wanted us to pronounce it S-Q-L, then, because encouraging pronunciation of the initial name would continue to infringe upon the Hawker Siddeley trademark!
Aside: Is it true that everyone thought the relational model was too slow to be practicable, until the Oracle team put a very fast implementation together (as Larry Ellison claimed in an interview)?
EDIT according to the article, Oracle had the first commercial version of it, and so from their point of view at the time, I guess it was true. It doesn't say if IBM's release a few weeks later was of comparable speed.
There were academic systems that (a) didn't use the SQL langauge (b) came before Oracle, but wasn't commercialized as quickly as Oracle.
Oracle's biggest business decision was standardizing on IBM's standards, according to Ingres founder Mike Stonebraker. Hugh Darwen and Paul McJones have all had stories about this. One source is: http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/ DB2 was also only funded by IBM on the premise that DB2 would increase disk storage sales: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/database_apps/s...
Hm, thought IMS was the original IBM database. You'd be surprised how many legacy mainframes still run this system.
I spent a summer at the IBM San Jose Research Labratory and met some of the original database team. Bruce Lindsay was one of them and he is a fascinating guy with a genius brain.
* It works in all contexts ("sequel" gets clunky with names like PostgreSQL)
* It's not some aircraft company's trademark
* MySQL officially states their product's name is My S-Q-L (though they don't mind MySequel, but it's not the real name)
* Unlike "ARP" or "BIOS", "SQL" doesn't map to just one pronunciation. "Squeal", "Squirrel", and others are just as "valid" as "Sequel". Frankly, if I had never heard of SQL/Sequel and you put those three letters in front of me and made me pronounce them, "Squeal" is probably what I'd go with.
Funny but I once met an isolated developer who lived away from any other technologists. He pronounced it squeal. It was hard not to laugh but I couldn't correct him because he was giving us a presentation. The best I could do was offer the sequel alternative in our dialog.
'Postgre' is improper always. You should either say 'Postgres' or 'Post gres que el'. There is a Factoid on the Postrgres site about proper pronunciation, and there have even been discussions about just going back to the name 'Postgres' which was the original name of the project.
In the US, this is considered legally ok because nobody would confuse an aircraft with a query language. For example, you have Delta airlines and Delta faucet.
3rd option for "It doesn't matter, I don't really pay attention to which I use or perhaps I alternate between them... and I won't hold a grudge against anyone who says it differently?"
If that's too long, you can just an option that reads "Doesn't matter"
That's still not a good answer. My use of "sequel" or "S.Q.L" depends on many factors. For a non-technical crowd, or one that I otherwise know is unfamiliar with the topic, it's always S.Q.L. Similarly, If I'm throwing around many terms in a technical discussion, I will often use S.Q.L., that being the clearer form. I say "sequel" in the context of "let's take a look at this sequel here..."
I pronounce it S-Q-L when talking about the base language., but I pronounce the Oracle variant as P-L-S-Q-L. I pronounce the Microsoft product as Sequel Server, but I pronounce MYSQL as My S-Q-L.
Pronunciation discrepancies are common in this field. How do you pronounce "char"? Or "cout" and "cin"? C++ was the first language I learned and I did so entirely through books, so I came up with my own pronunciations for everything. It wasn't until years later that I went to college and for the first time heard other people saying these terms orally. It was quite a shock to hear my professor say "char" (as in "charcoal"). That's pronounced "care" dammit! :)
I pronounce "cout" as "koot", and "cin" as "sin", as silly as that may be. Why? Just the terms my young virgin programming mind settled on, and there's just no way after all these years I can drop the habit.
"The official way to pronounce MySQL is 'My Ess Que Ell' (not 'my sequel'), but we do not mind if you pronounce it as 'my sequel' or in some other localized way."
Sequel, as in "my sequel" because it takes less time. I gravitated to this when I started having to use the term a lot more. Interestingly, I still say "post gray ess queue ell", dunno why. Actually, more often I'll just say "post grays" because the "SQL" at the end doesn't help disambiguate from anything else that starts with "postgre"
I usually pronounce PostgreSQL "post-greh-see-quel", though sometimes I use the pronunciation you give, just as sometimes I pronounce MySQL as "my-s-q-l". Partly it depends on the conversation, since I tend to fall into whatever the other person is calling it.
The correct pronunciation as stated in the standard is "ess que ell". I can't quote the ISO standard because it doesn't seem to be freely available, but I'm quoting C. J. Date from his book SQL and Relational Theory:
In particular, I follow the standard in assuming the pronunciation "ess cue ell", not "sequel" (though this latter is common in the field), thereby saying things like an SQL table, not a SQL table. (page xvii)
What I have always found a little awkward is the use of 'a' or 'an' when written in a sentence. For example "..run a SQL query.." versus "..run an SQL query..". The spelling is the same, but the author's pronunciation can differ.
Do you really think this poll should be worth >500 points? (Now >1000)? I voted to count my opinion for the OP, but I would hardly recommend it as being "intellectually stimulating".
The problem with voting up main stories is that they become part of your "saved stories", and I really don't want this link to be there, so I'm not going to vote it up.
Same reason here. As a side note, I've noticed that non-techies more often refer to it by S-Q-L so I'll change it up when I speak with them. I suppose pronouncing it "sequel" is more of an industry jargon type of thing.
I say "sequel" ("s-q-l" hardly rolls off the tongue) but often in my group we call it "skewl", because in addition to shaving off half the syllables of "sequel", it sounds fittingly sorta gross.
Doesn't the G in GIF stand for Graphics? You'd think the hard G would carry over into the acronym. Or is it because the G in GIF precedes an I and therefore gets pronounced as a soft G?
I'm reading too far into this. Why do you say Jiff is correct? For the record, I rarely hear "giff" myself.
"The creators of the format pronounced GIF with a soft "G", /ˈdʒɪf/, as in "gin". However, another alternative pronunciation uses a hard "G", /ˈɡɪf/, as in "graphics", reflecting the expanded acronym. Both pronunciations are given as correct by the Oxford English Dictionary[2] and the American Heritage Dictionary.[3]
According to Steve Wilhite, the creator of the GIF format, the original pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand, Jif, and the employees of CompuServe would often say "Choosy developers choose GIF", spoofing this brand's television commercials.[4] This pronunciation was also identified by CompuServe in their documentation of a graphics display program called CompuShow.[4]"
I didn't mean to make a mountain out of a small off-hand remark, but I thought it was interesting point. I too say "GIF", with a hard "G" - always have and always will :)
If memory serves, the creator of the gif format was known to say "choosy programmers choose gif", a reference to the classic "choosy moms choose Jif" slogan. He always said the official pronunciation is "jiff". His name escapes me though.
You just made me realize I use both. Now I just have to figure out if there is a pattern to when I use each and if I am imparting any meaning with my choice.
I think I tend to say "sequel", especially when discussing "SQL Server" or "MySQL", because "Ess Cue Ell Server" or "My Ess Cue Ell" is a lot slower to say than "Sequel Server" or "My Sequel".
But then I go to discuss PostgreSQL and I'm pretty much stuck saying "Post Gres Cue Ell" because, seriously, how else should I say that? "Postgres Sequel"? "Postgree Sequel"?
The alternative is to fall back to calling it "Postgres". And sometimes I do that, because PostgreSQL is torture to pronounce no matter how you try to do it.
I used to say S-Q-L in France but when I arrived in SF everybody was talking about "sequel" ... it took me some time to figure out what this damn sequel was.
Now I use sequel in english and S-Q-L in french.
I was thinking it was the english way to say it.
I have a friend who while converting from a pre-SQL RDBMS to Ingres liked to call it Squeal (the whole package from that era, 1989 or so, wasn't exactly great although it did get the job done).
I'm exactly the same. I try to make a point of saying "Ess-Queue-Ell" because I consider it more correct, and less ambiguous (not just because of the previous query language, but because 'sequel' is a word in common usage, and 'SQL' is not). However, I think I see saying "Sequel Server" as a brand. If I saw "SQL Server" outside of a Microsoft context, my first though would probably be that of a generic client-server RDBMS.
Both, for purely pragmatic reasons. I don't really care about the history of the pronunciation, I just want to be understood. So to reduce confusion, in conversations with other developers I generally just use whatever everyone else seems to be using.
If it's just me speaking, I get to choose -- in that case I start off with "Sequel", for the tiny reason that it rolls off the tongue a bit more easily (hey, it's one less syllable!).
Although it's a matter of opinion, I break it down like this:
1) SQL is an acronym
2) Acronyms are typically enunciated letter by letter, although it's not uncommon for them to be enunciated as a word either (ARP is read as a word, although it's an acronym for Address Resolution Protocol).
Since I see more acronyms get enunciated letter by letter vs complete word, I tend to say ES-QUE-EL.
Just now, in a regional language newspaper of India, I saw that a misguided reporter used LED(Light Emitting Diode) as if it was Led, the element. :). So clearly, abbreviations should not be read out.
I came into my current job having always pronounced it Ess-Cue-Ell. However, not a single person at my job has pronounced it as such. Sequel all the way. I quickly picked up the local pronunciation.
Technically, your supposed to spell it out, but unless I'm talking about PostgreSQL (which doesn't work unless you spell it out) I say 'sequel' because I like it better.
I seem to switch back and forth. I'll say "sequel statement", but "write some SQL". Maybe "sequel" when it's an adjective, "SQL" when it's a noun, something like that.
Ummm. There absolutly is a correct pronunciation for Linux. Any person who's been involved with it for more than 10 years will remember the AIFF file floating around:
"My name is Leenus Torvalds and I pronounce Leenux, Leenux"
And while there's some slack on how to pronounce SQL (because of the origins (QUEL from Stonebraker and then the whole SEQUEL/SQL issue), it's understandable and acceptable that people could pronounce it either way.
However with Linux, given that the author is named Linus and has named it after himself, I think it's fair to say, Leenux is the proper way.
But I don't pronounce hardly any of the words {hello, this, is, Linus, Torvalds, and, I, pronounce, as} the same way he does, so why should I pronounce "Linux" the same way? (In other words, pronunciations are localized.)
I hear Lenux more often than Leenux, though I have to say my preference is Leenux, given that his name is Leenus.
I said Lie-nux for the first 5 years or so that it was around, based on the way I read his name as an American.
I could be ok with Lie-nux or Leenux, but I've never agreed with Lenux.
The only reason he says it that way is because of his accent. And SQL stands for Structured Query Language you fucking idiot, there is no pronunciation.
I would say that you're absolutely right: "Hello, this is Leee-nooos Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as 'Leee-noox'."
However: most English-speakers, Americans in particular, are not going to adopt Linus' accent when pronouncing the name -- although, as I said, I completely agree with that logic. There is no logical justification I've ever heard for the pronunciation of Linux as "Lih-nux".
On the other hand: it doesn't matter how you pronounce it. It's just a name. We have more important problems to solve! :-)
SQL was developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce in the early 1970s. This version, initially called SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language), was designed to manipulate and retrieve data stored in IBM's original relational database management system, System R, which a group at IBM San Jose Research Laboratory had developed during the 1970s.[6] The acronym SEQUEL was later changed to SQL because "SEQUEL" was a trademark of the UK-based Hawker Siddeley aircraft company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sql