ANSI has declared that the official pronunciation for SQL is /ɛs kjuː ɛl/ Klint Gore wrote:
Who's "they"? The only datbase vendor I've heard call their own product "sequel" is MS.
SEQUEL (pronounced sequel) was a predecessor to SQL in IBM's 1970's System R database; but isn't really the same thing as SQL. [both statements from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sql ]