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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
"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 :)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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! :-)
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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..."
133 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadI 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.
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
It's interesting how two people can use the exact same justification to come to two totally different conclusions.
It looks like the Sequel is winning in the poll vs S-Q-L too!
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.
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...
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.
Although I try to use sequel nowadays, I still occasionally hear myself say squeal.
Another weird one I noticed is some people pronounce GIF as jiff, rather than giff.
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]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format
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 :)
Now I use sequel in english and S-Q-L in french. I was thinking it was the english way to say it.
This poll proves me it's wrong :-)
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_PostgreSQL.3F_Ho...
However, the first "a" in Nevada is like the "a" in "cab". That's not negotiable. ;-)
"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.
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.
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! :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IfHm6R5le0
"Hello, this is Linus Torvalds, and I pronounce Linux as Linux!"
How do you think he says it?
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)
Worth voting in, but not up.
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.
If that's too long, you can just an option that reads "Doesn't matter"