About the Authors

Ralph Kimball founded the Kimball Group. Since the mid-1980s, he has been the data warehouse and business intelligence industry's thought leader on the dimensional approach. He has educated tens of thousands of IT professionals. The Toolkit books written by Ralph and his colleagues have been the industry's best sellers since 1996. Prior to working at Metaphor and founding Red Brick Systems, Ralph coinvented the Star workstation, the first commercial product with windows, icons, and a mouse, at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Ralph has a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Margy Ross is president of the Kimball Group. She has focused exclusively on data warehousing and business intelligence since 1982 with an emphasis on business requirements and dimensional modeling. Like Ralph, Margy has taught the dimensional best practices to thousands of students; she also coauthored five Toolkit books with Ralph. Margy previously worked at Metaphor and cofounded DecisionWorks Consulting. She graduated with a BS in industrial engineering from Northwestern University.