The authors’ professional careers have followed remarkably similar paths. Each author has focused on data warehousing and business intelligence (DW/BI) consulting and education for more than fifteen years. Most worked together at Metaphor Computer Systems, a pioneering decision support vendor, in the 1980s. All the authors are members of the Kimball Group and teach for KimballUniversity. They contribute regularly to Intelligent Enterprise magazine and other industry publications; most have previously written books in the Toolkit series.
Ralph Kimball founded the Kimball Group. Since the mid 1980s, he has been the DW/BI industry’s thought leader on the dimensional approach and trained more than 10,000 IT professionals. Ralph has his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Margy Ross is President of the Kimball Group. She has focused exclusively on DW/BI since 1982 with an emphasis on business requirements analysis and dimensional modeling. Margy graduated with a BS in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University.

Warren Thornthwaite began his DW/BI career in 1980. After managing Metaphor’s consulting organization, he worked for Stanford University and WebTV. Warren holds a BAin Communications Studies from the University of Michigan and anMBA from the University of Pennsylvania’sWharton School.

JoyMundy has focused onDW/BIsystems since 1992 with stints at Stanford, Web TV, and Microsoft’s SQL Server product development organization. Joy graduated from Tufts University with a BA in Economics, and from Stanford University with an MS in Engineering Economic Systems.

Bob Becker has helped clients across a variety of industries with their DW/BI challenges and solutions since 1989, including extensive work with health care organizations. Bob has a BSB in Marketing from the University of Minnesota’s School of Business.