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Michael Stonebraker

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Michael Stonebraker
Born (1943-10-11) October 11, 1943 (age 83)
United States
Occupation(s)Computer scientist, professor emeritus
Known forRelational database systems, Ingres, Postgres, Turing Award
Notable workIngres, Postgres, Aurora Project, C-Store, H-Store, SciDB

Michael Ralph Stonebraker (born October 11, 1943) is a prominent American computer scientist with a focus on database systems. His academic innovations and entrepreneurial ventures have played a pivotal role in shaping numerous relational database technologies. Stonebraker established several database enterprises, including Ingres Corporation, Illustra, Paradigm4, StreamBase Systems, Tamr, Vertica, VoltDB, and Hopara, and held the position of chief technical officer at Informix. In recognition of his groundbreaking work in database research, he was awarded the 2014 Turing Award, often regarded as the "Nobel Prize for computing."

Stonebraker’s professional journey can be divided into two significant periods: his tenure at the University of California, Berkeley, where he created relational database management systems such as Ingres and Postgres, and his work from 2001 onward at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he concentrated on cutting-edge data management projects like C-Store, H-Store, SciDB, and DBOS. Presently, he holds the title of professor emeritus at UC Berkeley and serves as an adjunct professor at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Additionally, Stonebraker is recognized for editing the influential volume Readings in Database Systems.

Life

Raised in Milton, New Hampshire, Stonebraker completed his undergraduate studies in electrical engineering, earning a B.S.E. from Princeton University in 1965. He then pursued graduate education at the University of Michigan, obtaining an M.S. in 1967 followed by a Ph.D. in 1971. His accolades include the prestigious IEEE John von Neumann Medal and the inaugural SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award. In 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. Three years later, in 1997, Stonebraker was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to developing and commercializing relational and object-relational database technologies. Among other honors, he received both the ACM Turing Award and the Commonwealth Award from MassTLC in 2015.

The Berkeley years (1971–2000)

Starting as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, Stonebraker dedicated twenty-nine years to teaching computer science while spearheading advances in relational database systems.

Ingres

In 1973, together with colleague Eugene Wong, Stonebraker embarked on research into relational databases inspired by foundational papers authored by Edgar F. Codd outlining the relational data model.

Their initiative, named Ingres (Interactive Graphics and Retrieval System), became one of the earliest projects to successfully implement a practical and efficient relational database system alongside IBM's System R. Ingres introduced critical innovations such as employing B-tree indexing structures, primary-copy replication strategies, query rewriting techniques for views and integrity constraints, as well as rules and triggers to enforce data integrity—concepts that remain integral to relational database design today. Experimental efforts also enhanced locking protocols to boost transaction throughput.

By the mid-1970s, Stonebraker’s team had developed a fully operational relational database running on Unix-based machines from Digital Equipment Corporation. Though initially viewed as a "low-end" alternative compared to IBM's mainframe solutions, by the early 1980s Ingres had achieved performance levels that posed a competitive threat to IBM’s dominance and established itself as a commercially viable product across various applications.

The Ingres system was distributed under a modified version of the BSD license for a nominal charge, enabling multiple companies to create commercial derivatives. Stonebraker co-founded Relational Technology, Inc., which was later renamed Ingres Corporation before being acquired by Computer Associates. The company was re-established independently in 2005 under the name Actian. Other ventures emerging from Ingres technology include Sybase, founded by former student Robert Epstein; Sybase's code subsequently influenced development of Microsoft SQL Server. Additionally, companies like Britton Lee, Inc. trace their origins to this lineage.

Postgres

Following the establishment of Relational Technology, Stonebraker and Rowe introduced POSTGRES (an acronym for POST inGRES) to address the shortcomings of the relational database model. Engineered to handle sophisticated data types and boost performance in data-heavy applications, Postgres implemented an object-relational framework that allowed for complex attributes, user-defined types, as well as scalar and aggregate functions. Its extensible architecture gave developers the ability to customize components such as the optimizer, query language, runtime environment, and indexing mechanisms, enhancing programmability and facilitating the integration of specialized applications like geographic information systems and time series processing. This innovation expanded opportunities within the commercial database sector.

Postgres was distributed under a BSD-style license and served as the foundation for the open-source PostgreSQL. Stonebraker commercialized this technology through Illustra, which was later acquired by Informix. The development of PostgreSQL also inspired several startups, including Aster Data Systems, EnterpriseDB, and Greenplum.

In 1996, Informix purchased Illustra and appointed Stonebraker as Chief Technology Officer, a role he held until 2000. Informix integrated Illustra’s object-relational mapping and DataBlade extensions into its 7.x OnLine product line, which evolved into Informix Universal Server (IUS), also known as Version 9.

Mariposa and Cohera

After Postgres, Stonebraker launched the Mariposa initiative, which subsequently led to the creation of Cohera Corporation. Mariposa focused on building a federated database system driven by an economic framework for resource allocation, enabling the integration and querying of distributed datasets across multiple organizations through a unified relational interface. This system enforced site-specific policies that charged fees for processing power and storage usage. These policies not only facilitated query optimization among competing sites but also controlled data storage, replication, and transfer throughout the federation.

Initially intended to commercialize Mariposa technology, Cohera shifted its strategy toward developing a business-to-business catalog management solution powered by its federated data integration platform. In 2001, Cohera’s intellectual property was acquired by PeopleSoft, forming the core of PeopleSoft’s Enterprise Catalog Management product. Later, in 2004, PeopleSoft itself was acquired by Oracle Corporation.

The MIT years (2001–present)

Stonebraker joined MIT as an adjunct professor in 2001, where he initiated new research endeavors and established several startups.

Aurora and StreamBase

Within the Aurora Project, Stonebraker collaborated with researchers from Brandeis University, Brown University, and MIT to create a data management system tailored for streaming data. This system employed an innovative data model and query language distinct from traditional relational databases that "pull" individual records; instead, Aurora "pushes" asynchronous streams—such as stock market ticks or news feeds—and produces derived streams like moving averages over specific windows.

In 2003, Stonebraker co-founded StreamBase Systems to bring Aurora’s streaming data technology to market.

C-Store and Vertica

Beginning in 2005, Stonebraker worked alongside colleagues from Brandeis, Brown, MIT, and University of Massachusetts Boston on C-Store—a parallel shared-nothing column-oriented DBMS specifically designed for data warehousing applications. By organizing data storage by columns rather than rows, C-Store minimizes input/output operations and enhances compression efficiency.

Stonebraker emphasized that this advantage arises from storing homogeneous data elements consecutively (for example: Name, Name, Name instead of Name, Address, Zip). In the same year, he co-founded Vertica to commercialize the innovations developed through C-Store.

Morpheus and Goby

In 2006, Stonebraker partnered with researchers from the University of Florida to launch the Morpheus initiative. Morpheus is a data integration platform that utilizes "transforms" to bridge heterogeneous data sources by offering queryable interfaces for websites or services. This system supports chaining multiple transforms to generate consolidated views or develop novel services.

Three years later, in 2009, Stonebraker co-established Goby, a local search enterprise inspired by the Morpheus framework, designed to assist users in finding activities during their leisure time.

H-Store and VoltDB

In 2007, Stonebraker collaborated with scholars from Brown University, MIT, and Yale University to create the H-Store project. This initiative focused on building a distributed main-memory OLTP (online transaction processing) system optimized for handling high-volume transaction workloads efficiently.

Following this, in 2009, he co-founded VoltDB, a commercial venture grounded in H-Store principles, where he also served as an advisor.

SciDB

Stonebraker joined forces in 2008 with David DeWitt and researchers from institutions including Brown, MIT, Portland State University, SLAC, University of Washington, and University of Wisconsin–Madison to develop SciDB. This open-source database management system caters specifically to scientific research applications.

Together with Marilyn Matz as CEO, he founded Paradigm4. The company advanced SciDB’s development to serve clients mainly within life sciences and financial sectors, counting organizations such as Novartis, Foundation Medicine, and the National Institutes of Health among its users.

NoSQL

During 2010 and 2011, Stonebraker expressed public criticism of the NoSQL movement, highlighting the advantages of traditional SQL databases over NoSQL solutions in enterprise environments.

Notable students

Stonebraker has mentored over 30 doctoral students, including several distinguished individuals such as:

Selected works

External links

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