Jim Gray - His Contribution to Industry-vaskevitch.pdf

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Jim Gray: His Contribution to Industry

David Vaskevitch

Microsoft

One Microsoft Way

Redmond, WA 98052

(01) 425-706-8044

DavidV@microsoft.com

Abstract

Jim Gray was successful in many aspects of his life. Not only did

he have a profound influence on the computer industry, but also

on all of the people that he interacted with along the way. It is

this balance contribution to society that makes Jim truly unique.

A Man of Ideas, Community and People

Jim Gray’s contribution to the computer industry can be summed

up in three words: ideas, community, and people. All three of

these are huge, most people would be proud to have contributed in

any one of these space; Jim contributed hugely in all three.

Of course Jim was one of the fathers of the database industry as

we know it today. While databases were invented, per se, in the

late 60’s and early 70’s, those early systems were not usable in

most practical terms. Many of the basic concepts we take for

granted weren’t even defined terms then; Jim was there making it

all happen.

Perhaps transactions are the single idea most often associated with

Jim and the people he worked with back then. The transaction

was a brilliant concept that all at once made the programmers job

much easier, made the database far more understandable, made

systems run faster, and contributed hugely to reliability both

perceived and real. But Jim’s commitment to always finding and

promoting new ideas went much beyond engineering oriented

constructs like transactions.

Every time I talked to Jim, read his papers, heard him present, I

was always impressed, even taken aback, at how far into the

future he was always capable of looking. He could always see

broad new uses for computers before anybody else, and then

could help push us to get there sooner and better. One time it was

building a Billion Transaction Per Day demo server, another time

it was building the world’s first “Terra Server”, both to serve up

maps of the entire world, and also to build a bigger database than

anybody had imagined before that point in time. All of which

bring me to my second broad point: community.

Jim’s deep and broad thinking influenced and even created entire

communities. In recent years he worked with astronomers, life

science researchers and many others exploring completely new

ways to organize the huge reams of data they were creating and

finding as they explored the edges of the universe (inside and

outside). At other times, Jim pushed for making database

available to ordinary people, pushed for making distributed

systems become practical and real, and again, more. Each time

Jim was always reaching out, encouraging people, getting work to

happen across teams and across organizations, energizing,

galvanizing and even creating communities of interest, of friends,

of colleagues, of people. Which brings me to the most profound

point of all: people.

Everywhere he went Jim had a huge impact on people. He was a

good listener, an empathic debater, always open minded, always

encouraging. And, people turned to him from everywhere.

People throughout the industry were constantly seeking advice

from Jim about how to do things, where to do them, how to work

with others, and more.

The computer industry is both very large and very small.

Companies and organizations compete with each other intensely,

and yet, in many ways, everybody knows everybody else. But Jim

was the one who could make sure that, wherever people worked,

they could always talk with each other. People make the industry

and in many cases, Jim really helped make the people throughout

the various stages of their careers.

Ideas: Jim had so many of them, and got to follow so many of

them through. For sure database as we know them today would

not be the same without Jim. And, in many ways the distributed

computer infrastructure that drives so much of our society and

economy would probably not be the same without the many

contributions Jim made. So, the ideas, yes, they are all there, and

make an amazing list.

Communities: both inside all the companies Jim worked for –

IBM, Tandem, DEC, and Microsoft – Jim left his stamp in terms

of stronger teams and communities than would have been possible

without him. And, more importantly across those companies and

many more, Jim helped create a broad sense of community that

actually reached beyond the computer industry in many ways.

People: there are so many people, including myself, who

benefited from Jim’s golden touch. His wisdom. His personal,

career and technical advice. He truly was one of the few people

everybody turns to. And, in many ways, Jim’s people

contribution was at least as profound as the other two.

Finally, although this paper is about Jim’s contribution to

Industry, I could not conclude without talking at least briefly not

just about “people” but about Jim as a person. He was a great

friend. I valued the times I could spend with him and was both

proud and grateful that that friendship extended to the rest of my

family including my children each of whom got to know Jim as

the wonderful person that he is. In fact, in a way this sums it up

the best. Jim was a prophetic man of ideas and execution.

However, what made those prophetic ideas and projects really

impactful and successful far beyond any normal norm was his

ability to be such a warm and complete human being; a friend to

me and a friend to so many others. That really is the essence of

Jim Gray in industry and in the world.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for

personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are

not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that

copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy

otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists,

requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.

Jim Gray Tribute, May 31, 2008, Berkeley, CA, USA.

SIGMOD Record, June 2008 (Vol. 37, No. 2)