Ralph Kimball 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. His books on dimensional design techniques have become the all time best sellers in data warehousing. To date Ralph has written more than 100 articles and columns for Intelligent Enterprise and its predecessors, winning the Readers’ Choice Award five years in a row.
After receiving a Ph.D. in 1972 from Stanford in electrical engineering (specializing in man-machine systems), Ralph joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). At PARC Ralph co-invented the Xerox Star Workstation, the first commercial product to use mice, icons and windows.
Ralph then became vice president of applications at Metaphor Computer Systems, pioneering decision support software and services provider. As a hands-on manager, 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.
Ralph founded Red Brick Systems in 1986, serving as CEO until 1992. Red Brick Systems, now owned by IBM, was known for its lightning fast relational database optimized for data warehousing. Ralph Kimball Associates incorporated in 1992 to provide data warehouse consulting and education.