Ralph Kimball

Ralph Kimball (born 1944) is an author on the subject of data warehousing and business intelligence. He is one of the original architects of data warehousing and is known for long-term convictions that data warehouses must be designed to be understandable and fast. His methodology, also known as dimensional modeling or the Kimball methodology, has become the de facto standard in the area of decision support.

For the Wyoming Supreme Court judge, see Ralph Kimball (judge). For the English cricketer, see Ralph Kimbell.

He is the principal author of the best-selling[1] books The Data Warehouse Toolkit,[2] The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit and The Kimball Group Reader, published by Wiley and Sons.

Career

After receiving a Ph.D.[1] in 1973 from Stanford University 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, 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. Red Brick Systems was acquired by Informix, which is now owned by IBM.[3] Red Brick was known for its relational database optimized for data warehousing. Their claim to fame was the use of bit-map Indexes in order to achieve performance gains that amounted to almost 10 times that of other Database vendors at that time.

Ralph Kimball Associates incorporated in 1992 to provide data warehouse consulting and education.

The Kimball Group, founded by Kimball,[1] formalized existing long-term relationships between Ralph Kimball Associates, DecisionWorks Consulting, and InfoDynamics LLC.

Bibliography
  • Kimball, Ralph; Margy Ross (2013). The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling (3rd ed.). Wiley. ISBN 978-1-118-53080-1.
  • Kimball, Ralph; Margy Ross (2010). The Kimball Group Reader. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-56310-6.
  • Kimball, Ralph; Margy Ross; Warren Thornthwaite; Joy Mundy; Bob Becker (2008). The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit (2nd ed.). Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-14977-5.
  • Kimball, Ralph; Joe Caserta (2004). The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit. Wiley. ISBN 0-7645-6757-8.
  • Kimball, Ralph; Margy Ross (2002). The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling (2nd ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0-471-20024-7.
  • Kimball, Ralph; Richard Merz (2000). The Data Webhouse Toolkit: Building the Web-Enabled Data Warehouse. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-37680-9.
  • Kimball, Ralph; et al. (1998). The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-25547-5.
  • Kimball, Ralph (1996). The Data Warehouse Toolkit. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-15337-5.
gollark: Also, while this isn't the same class of privacy issue as Google analytics tracking and whatnot, governments can use big piles of data to enhance control of the populace and stop dissent. Look at China.
gollark: Privacy *is* to some extent a direct goal for people, since you probably wouldn't want to, I don't know, use a toilet with glass walls in the middle of a public square.
gollark: Partly, but you can also just not give them the data. It's easier than trying to stop price discrimination.
gollark: Yes, but there's a lot of data gathered which I think isn't something they need for that.
gollark: For example, companies can buy data someone collects and use it for price discrimination.

References
  1. "Dr. Ralph Kimball and Informatica Host Big Data Best Practices Webinar Industry Leaders and Innovators Share Newly Emerging Best Practices for Big Data". Informatica. 2012-09-28. Archived from the original on 2015-12-11. Retrieved 2015-12-11. Dr. Ralph Kimball, founder of the Kimball Group, is known worldwide as an innovator, writer, educator, speaker and consultant in the field of data warehousing. He has remained steadfast in his long-term conviction that data warehouses must be designed to be understandable and fast. Ralph's books on dimensional design techniques have become the all-time best sellers in data warehousing and he has trained more than 10,000 IT professionals around the globe. Prior to founding Kimball Group, he worked at Metaphor, founded Red Brick Systems and co-invented the Star workstation at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Ralph has his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
  2. Whitehorn, Mark (2010-03-09). "Inmon vs. Kimball data warehousing: the debate over DW architecture". ComputerWeekly.com. Archived from the original on 2015-10-03. Retrieved 2015-12-11. Indeed, the fact that Inmon wrote a foreword for the first edition of Kimball’s book The Data Warehouse Toolkit tells us that they probably take a balanced view.
  3. "IBM Red Brick Warehouse". IBM. 2015-12-11. Archived from the original on 2015-12-11. Retrieved 2017-03-04.
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