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.
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