Michael Kay has been working in the XML field since 1997; he became a member of the XSLWorking Group soon after the publication of XSLT 1.0, and took over as editor of the XSLT 2.0 specification in early 2001. He is also a member of the XQueryWorking Group, and is a joint editor of the XPath 2.0 specification. He is well known not only through previous editions of this book, but also as the developer of the open-source Saxon product, a pioneering implementation of XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0.
The author has recently formed his own company, Saxonica, to provide commercial software and services building on the success of the Saxon technology. Previously, he spent three years with Software AG, working with the developers of the Tamino XML server, a leading XQuery implementation. His background is in database technology: after leaving the University of Cambridge with a Ph.D., he worked for many years with the (then) computer manufacturer ICL, developing network, relational, and object-oriented database software products as well as a text search engine, and held the position of ICL Fellow.