David DeWitt
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David J. DeWitt | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1948 (age 75–76) |
| Alma mater | Colgate University, University of Michigan |
| Occupation | Technical Fellow at Microsoft |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Institutions | University of Wisconsin–Madison, Microsoft |
David J. DeWitt is the John P. Morgridge Professor (Emeritus) of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Professor DeWitt received a B.A. degree from Colgate University in 1970, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1976. He then joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison and started the Wisconsin Database Group, which he led for more than 30 years.
Professor DeWitt is known for his research in the areas of parallel databases, benchmarking, object-oriented databases, and XML databases. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (1998),[1] and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
He received the ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award (now renamed SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award) in 1995 for his contributions to the database systems field. In 2009, ACM recognized the seminal contributions of his Gamma parallel database system project with the ACM Software System Award. Also in 2009, he received the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award for his contributions to the database systems field.[2]
Currently, he is a technical fellow at Microsoft, leading the Microsoft Jim Gray Systems Lab at Madison, Wisconsin.
The "DeWitt Clause"
Several commercial database vendors include an end-user license agreement provision, known as the DeWitt Clause, that prohibits researchers and scientists from explicitly using the names of their systems in academic papers.[3][4]
In essence, a DeWitt Clause forbids the publication of database benchmarks that the database vendor has not sanctioned. The original DeWitt Clause was established by Oracle at the behest of Larry Ellison. Ellison was displeased with a benchmark study done by David DeWitt in 1982, then just an assistant professor, using his new Wisconsin Benchmark, which showed that Oracle's system had poor performance.[5]
Ellison called Wisconsin's department chair and demanded by that DeWitt be fired. After the department refused, Ellison personally banned Oracle from hiring any students from the University of Wisconsin and changed their license to prevent anyone else from mentioning Oracle by name in a benchmark study.[6]
References
- ^ "NAE Members Directory - Dr. David J. DeWitt". NAE. Retrieved December 31, 2010.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award Recipients" (PDF). IEEE. Retrieved December 31, 2010.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ Joseph M. Hellerstein; Michael Stonebraker (7 January 2005). Readings In Database Systems. MIT Press. pp. 96–. ISBN 978-0-262-69314-1. Retrieved 18 July 2012.
- ^ Moran, Brian (2003). "The Devil's in the DeWitt Clause" (published 2003-04-03). Retrieved 2012-07-18.
- ^ Dyck, Timothy (2002). "DB Test Pioneer Makes History" (published 2002-02-04). Retrieved 2012-07-18.
- ^ DeWitt, David (2012). "The Story of Professor DeWitt" (published 2012-01-30). Retrieved 2012-07-18.