SQL
SQL was initially developed at IBM by Donald D. Chamberlin and Raymond F. Boyce after learning about the relational model from Ted Codd 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 quasi-relational database management system, System R, which a group at IBM San Jose Research Laboratory had developed during the 1970s.
Vaporware
Not all delays in software are the developers' fault. In 1986, the American National Standards Institute adopted SQL as the standard database manipulation language. Software company Ashton-Tate was ready to release dBase IV, but pushed the release date back to add support for SQL. The company believed that the product would not be competitive without it. As the word became more commonly used by writers in the mid-1980s, "InfoWorld" magazine editor James Fawcette wrote that its negative connotations were unfair to developers because of these types of circumstances.