Codd Almighty! Has It Been Half A Century Of SQL Already?
The Register, Friday, May 31st, 2024
The Reg talks to Donald Chamberlin, Michael Stonebraker and more about the legendary programming language
In the fifty years since SQL was first proposed, it has become the dominant query language for working with relational databases. As such, it underpins the transactions vital to the workings of government, business and the world's economy. But like many standards, its path to global domination is not been a straight one, and in the early years of its gestation, the story could have been very different.
The clue is in the name. Although the acronym might stand for Structured Query Language, it was first known as SEQUEL, a nod to QUEL, a rival language for addressing information in relational databases developed at about the same time.