The Authors, from left to right:
Margy Ross, Ralph Kimball, Laura Reeves, Warren Thornthwaite
This page gives you more information about the authors and their
professional backgrounds than you probably wanted to know. We are providing this
information in case you are doing your own investigative due dilligence and want to make
sure we have a reasonable amount of legitimate experience in data warehousing.
| Ralph
Kimball |
Ralph Kimball brings more than 25 years of
experience in the computer industry and the business world. Ralph is the author of the
Data Warehouse Architect monthly column in DBMS magazine and is the author of the all time
best selling book on data warehousing, The Data Warehouse Toolkit (John Wiley & Sons,
1996). Ralph is the primary industry spokesperson for the discipline of dimensional
modeling. He teaches a series of training courses to Information Systems (IS) employees of
large companies. Since 1993, he has taught more than 4000 database designers in classes
all over the world. Ralph is currently the president of Ralph
Kimball Associates, a consulting firm specializing in the design of decision support
database systems for corporate environments. Prior to 1992, he was founder and CEO of Red
Brick Systems, Vice President of Applications at Metaphor Computer Systems, and
Development Manager at Xerox. At Xerox, Ralph was co-inventor of the Star Workstation, the
first commercial product to use mice, icons, and windows. Ralph received his Ph.D. in
electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1973.
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| Laura
Reeves |
Laura has over 13 years of experience in end to end
data warehouse development including developing global project plans, collecting business
requirement, developing Business Dimensional Models, logical and physical database designs
(both star and snowflake designs), end user applications and supporting deployment.
These data warehouses have been implemented in a wide variety of business functions across
many different industries. Laura is a frequent speaker at data
warehouse conferences and is a contributing author to 'Building a Data Warehouse for
Decision Support' by Vidette Poe. Laura spent over eight years at Metaphor, then worked
for MicroStrategy, Inc. before co-founding StarSoft Solutions in 1995. Laura
graduated Magna Cum Laude from
Alma College with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics & Computer Science with
Departmental Honors.
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| Margy
Ross |
Margy has
concentrated exclusively on decision support and data warehousing for over 16 years. She
has worked with key business executives and IS professionals in over fifty Fortune 1000
companies to plan, justify, design and implement their decision support solutions. Margy co-founded DecisionWorks Consulting in 1994 to provide product-independent
data warehouse consulting services. Since its launch, Margy has specialized in readiness
assessments, business requirements analysis and dimensional modeling projects. Margy has
also delivered dimensional modeling education internationally and is a highly-rated
speaker at data warehousing industry conferences. She previously worked at Metaphor
for 10 years where she held a variety of consulting, marketing and sales management
positions. Margy began her career with Andersen Consulting. She graduated with a BS in
Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University.
|
| Warren
Thornthwaite |
Warren has over 16 years of decision support
and data warehousing systems experience. He has worked with executives and professionals
in a broad range of industries to develop scalable, practical information access
architectures. Warren has consulted extensively in requirements analysis, systems
architecture, dimensional design, and front room development, and is a popular speaker at
data warehousing conferences. Before co-founding InfoDynamics,
Warren worked at Metaphor for eight years, where he managed the national consulting
organization and implemented many major data warehouse systems. Warren also managed the
enterprise data warehouse project at Stanford University, and is currently managing the
group responsible for supporting business users of the data warehouse at WebTV Networks,
Inc. Warren has a BA in Communications Studies from the University of Michigan and
an MBA in Decision Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
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