Hacker News Reader

Depends on whether you pronounce it see-kew-lite or ess-kew-lite :)

I was always under the impression that pronouncing “SQL” as “sequel” was a marketing meme started by Microsoft for their proprietary software.

When I was at college in the mid 80's and studied relational databases (and stuff like CODASYL :) ) we pronounced it "sequel". This was long before I was aware MS had their own SQL product (edit: which first shipped in 1989 on OS/2). As per our lectures, the "sequel" pronunciation dates back to when there was a database language named "SEQUEL"; and despite the name change, "sequel" stuck as the pronunciation.

In all my years in the industry working with SQL databases (since the early 90's), virtually no-one familiar with these products spelled out S-Q-L as the pronunciation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL#History

I think when you write "SQL", regardless of pronunciation, it should be "a".

no, the person you're replying to is correct.

the rule is about the sound of what follows, not whether or not it's a consonant/vowel:

- an SSD if you pronounce it ess-ess-dee

- a universal constraint - vowel but a is correct here due to sound

- an SQL database - again, pronunciation dependent

“an” sounds more natural to my ears, right or wrong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com