Ralph Kimball (born July 18, 1944) is an author on the subject of

data warehousing In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for Business intelligence, reporting and data analysis and is a core component of business intelligence. Data warehouses are central Re ...

and

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

. He is one of the original architects of

and is known for long-term convictions that data warehouses must be designed to be understandable and fast. His bottom-up methodology, also known as dimensional modeling or the Kimball methodology, is one of the two main data warehousing methodologies alongside Bill Inmon. He is the principal author of the best-selling books ''The Data Warehouse Toolkit'' (1996), ''The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit'' (1998), ''The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit'' (2004) and ''The Kimball Group Reader'' (2015), published by Wiley and Sons.

Career

After receiving a Ph.D. in 1973 from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in electrical engineering (specializing in man-machine systems), Ralph joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). At PARC Ralph was a principal designer of the Xerox Star Workstation, the first commercial product to use

mice A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

, icons and windows. Kimball then became vice president of applications at Metaphor Computer Systems, a decision support software and services provider. He developed the Capsule Facility in 1982. The Capsule was a graphical programming technique which connected icons together in a logical flow, allowing a very visual style of programming for non-programmers. The Capsule was used to build reporting and analysis applications at Metaphor. Kimball founded Red Brick Systems in 1986, serving as CEO until 1992. The company was acquired by Informix, which is now owned by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

. Red Brick was known for its

relational database A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

optimized for data warehousing. Their claim to fame was the use of bit-map

Indexes Index (: indexes or indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (A Certain Magical Index), Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, a ...

in order to achieve performance gains that amounted to almost 10 times that of other Database vendors at that time. Since 1992, Kimball has provided data warehouse consulting and education through various companies such as Ralph Kimball Associates and the Kimball Group.

Bibliography

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References

External links

Kimball Group

Differences of Opinion: The Kimball bus architecture and the Corporate Information Factory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kimball, Ralph Business intelligence Data warehousing Technical writers Living people 1944 births Scientists at PARC (company)

Career

See also

Bibliography

References

External links