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IBM Fellow Don Chamberlin is best known as the 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 and the first to take a unified approach to data definition, manipulation and control. He also was one of the managers of the System R project, which produced the first SQL implementation and developed much of IBM's relational database technology. System R developed the world's first cost-based query optimizer and demonstrated that a single database system can handle both high-volume online transactions and ad-hoc decision-support queries.
A native of San Jose, California, Chamberlin earned his B.S.in engineering in 1966 at Harvey Mudd College in Southern California and his M.S. and Ph.D.in electrical engineering in 1967 and 1971 at Stanford University. He joined IBM Research at the T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, in 1971. In 1973 he moved to San Jose and today works at IBM's Almaden Research Center there.
After two decades researching advanced desktop publishing systems and contributing to the design of IBM's flagship database product, DB2, Chamberlin in 1999 returned to language development as a key member of the team devising XQuery, which is expected to serve as a key interface for electronic commerce and other web-based applications. With Jonathan Robie and Daniela Florescu, Chamberlin designed the Quilt language which became the basis for the design of XQuery. He is IBM's representative on the W3C XML Query Working Group and is principal editor of the language specification for XQuery.
Chamberlin has been widely recognized for his pioneering research. Among his honors, Chamberlin was named ACM Fellow in 1994, elected to National Academy of Engineering in 1997, named an IBM Fellow in 2003 and given an honorary doctorate by the University of Zurich in 2005.
He has authored three books and more than 50 technical papers. Chamberlin has taught at the University of Santa Clara and contributed problems and served as judge for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest for eight consecutive years (1998-2005).
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