Donald D. Chamberlin is an American
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
who is one of the principal designers of the original
SQL language specification with
Raymond Boyce. He also made significant contributions to the development of
XQuery
XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, bin ...
.
Chamberlin was elected a member of the
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...
in 1997 for contributions to the SQL database query language.
Biography
Donald D. Chamberlin was born in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
. After attending
Campbell High School, he studied engineering at
Harvey Mudd College
Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolls 902 undergraduate students ...
from where he holds a BS. After graduating, he went to
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
on a
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
grant. At Stanford, he studied electrical engineering and minored in computer science. Chamberlin holds an MSc and a PhD degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. After graduating, Chamberlin went to work for
IBM Research
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...
at the
Yorktown Heights
Yorktown Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census.
History
Yorktown Heights is in the town of Yorktown, New York, in northern ...
research facility in New York, where he had previously had a summer internship.
Chamberlin is best known as co-inventor of SQL (Structured Query Language), the world's most widely used database language. Developed in the mid-1970s by Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce, SQL was the first commercially successful language for relational databases. Chamberlin also was one of the managers of IBM's System R project, which produced the first SQL implementation and developed much of IBM's relational database technology. System R, together with the
Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( , ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...
project at U.C. Berkeley, received the ACM Software System Award in 1988.
Until his retirement in 2009, he was based at the
Almaden Research Center
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...
. He was appointed an
IBM Fellow
An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM's CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achie ...
in 2003.
In 2000, jointly with Jonathan Robie and Daniela Florescu, he drafted a proposal for an XML query language called Quilt.
Many ideas from this proposal found their way into the
XQuery
XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, bin ...
language specification, which was developed by
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
with Chamberlin as an editor.
XQuery
XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, bin ...
became a W3C Recommendation in January 2007.
Chamberlin is also an
ACM Fellow,
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
Fellow, and a member of the
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...
. In 2005, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the
University of Zurich
The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...
.
In 2009, he was made a Fellow of the
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...
"for his fundamental work on structured query language (SQL) and database architectures."
Research
In 1988, Chamberlin was awarded the
ACM Software Systems Award
The ACM Software System Award is an annual award that honors people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both". It is awarded by ...
for his work on
System R.
Current work
Donald Chamberlin joined
Couchbase, Inc.
Couchbase, Inc. is an American public (NASDAQ symbol BASE) software company that develops and provides commercial packages and support for Couchbase Server and Couchbase Lite both of which are open-source, NoSQL, multi-model, document-orient ...
as Technical Advisor in 2015.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/potmsearch/detail/submission/5279522/Donald_D_Chamberlin
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Bibliography
He is the author of two books on IBM's DB2 UDB
Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON a ...
, and more than 50 technical papers.
He contributed a chapter (and the cover photograph) to the 2003 book ''XQuery from the Experts'', .
He contributed a chapter titled ''Sharing Our Planet'' to the 1997 book ''Beyond Calculation: the Next Fifty Years of Computing'', .
He has also contributed problems and served as a judge for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest for seventeen consecutive years (1998–2014).
He is the author of the book ''SQL++ For SQL Users: A Tutorial'', .
External links
Chamberlin's bio at IBM Research
Oral history interview with Donald Chamberlin, dated October 2001
Archived at Charles Babbage Institute
The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...
.
Oral history interview with Donald Chamberlin, dated July 2009
Archived at Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chamberlin, Donald D
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Harvey Mudd College alumni
IBM employees
IBM Fellows
Stanford University School of Engineering alumni
Database researchers
People from San Jose, California
Living people
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
Year of birth missing (living people)