David J. DeWitt (born July 20, 1948) is acomputer scientist specializing indatabase management system research at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] Prior to moving to MIT, DeWitt was theJohn P. Morgridge Professor (Emeritus) of Computer Sciences at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison. He was also aTechnical Fellow atMicrosoft, leading the Microsoft Jim Gray Systems Lab atMadison, Wisconsin. Professor DeWitt received a B.A. degree fromColgate University in 1970, and a Ph.D. from theUniversity of Michigan in 1976. He then joined theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison and started theWisconsin Database Group, which he led for more than 30 years.
David J. DeWitt | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | c. 1948 (age 76–77) |
| Alma mater | Colgate University University of Michigan |
| Occupation | Technical Fellow atMicrosoft |
| Awards | IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award(2009) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | University of Wisconsin–Madison,Microsoft,Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Website | pages |
Professor DeWitt is known for his research in the areas ofparallel databases,benchmarking,object-oriented databases, andXML databases.
He was elected a member of theNational Academy of Engineering (1998) for the theory and construction of database systems.[2] He is also a Fellow of theAssociation for Computing Machinery.
He received the ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award (now renamedSIGMOD 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 theACM Software System Award. Also in 2009, he received theIEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award for his contributions to the database systems field.[3]
DeWitt Clause
editSeveral commercial database vendors include anend-user license agreement provision, known as theDeWitt Clause, that prohibits researchers and scientists from explicitly using the names of their systems in academic papers.[4][5]
In essence, a DeWitt Clause forbids the publication of database benchmarks that the database vendor has not sanctioned. The original DeWitt Clause was established byOracle at the behest ofLarry Ellison. Ellison was displeased with a benchmark study done by David DeWitt in 1982, then an assistant professor, using his Wisconsin Benchmark program, which showed that Oracle's system had poor performance.[6]
Personal life
editProfessor DeWitt is an avid swimmer.
References
edit- ^@davidjdewitt (9 September 2016)."Last day as a MSFT employee. Have moved to Boston and am hanging out with Stonebraker at MIT" (Tweet) – viaTwitter.
- ^"NAE Members Directory - Dr. David J. DeWitt".NAE. RetrievedDecember 31, 2010.
- ^"IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award Recipients"(PDF).IEEE. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on November 24, 2010. RetrievedMarch 20, 2021.
- ^Joseph M. Hellerstein; Michael Stonebraker (7 January 2005).Readings In Database Systems. MIT Press. pp. 96–.ISBN 978-0-262-69314-1. Retrieved18 July 2012.
- ^Moran, Brian (2003)."The Devil's in the DeWitt Clause" (published 2003-04-03). Archived fromthe original on 2016-07-19. Retrieved2018-01-11.
- ^Dyck, Timothy (2002)."DB Test Pioneer Makes History" (published 2002-02-04). Retrieved2012-07-18.