Editing Jim Gray (computer scientist) (section)

==Research==
Gray pursued his career primarily working as a researcher and [[software design]]er at a number of industrial companies, including [[IBM]], [[Tandem Computers]], and [[Digital Equipment Corporation|DEC]]. He joined [[Microsoft]] in 1995 and was a Technical Fellow for the company{{efn|''See'' <ref name="wisc"/><ref>''Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques'' (with Andreas Reuter) (1993). {{ISBN|1-55860-190-2}}.</ref><ref>''The Benchmark Handbook: For Database and Transaction Processing Systems'' (1991). [[Morgan Kaufmann]]. {{ISBN|978-1-55860-159-8}}.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Saade |first1=E. |title=Search survey for S/V Tenacious |doi=10.1145/1379387.1379409 |journal=ACM SIGMOD Record |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=70–77 |year=2008  |s2cid=15504271 }}</ref><ref name="Searching for Jim Gray">{{Cite journal | last1 = Hellerstein | first1 = J. M. | last2 = Tennenhouse | first2 = D. L. | doi = 10.1145/1965724.1965744 | title = Searching for Jim Gray | journal = Communications of the ACM | volume = 54 | issue = 7 | pages = 77 | year = 2011 | doi-access =  | s2cid = 5608003 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Crawford | first1 = D. | title = Jim Gray | doi = 10.1145/1400214.1400216 | journal = Communications of the ACM | volume = 51 | issue = 11 | pages = 7 | year = 2008 | doi-access = free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Szalay | first1 = A. S. | title = Jim Gray, astronomer | doi = 10.1145/1400214.1400231 | journal = Communications of the ACM | volume = 51 | issue = 11 | pages = 58–65 | year = 2008 | s2cid = 1897698 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Gray | first1 = J. | title = Technical perspectiveThe Polaris Tableau system | doi = 10.1145/1400214.1400233 | journal = Communications of the ACM | volume = 51 | issue = 11 | pages = 74 | year = 2008 | s2cid = 43390262 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Stonebraker | first1 = M.| author-link1 = Michael Stonebraker | last2 = Dewitt | first2 = D. J. | author-link2 = David DeWitt| doi = 10.1145/1400214.1400230 | title = A tribute to Jim Gray | journal = Communications of the ACM | volume = 51 | issue = 11 | pages = 54 | year = 2008 | s2cid = 30060029}}</ref>|name=technical_fellow}} until he was lost at sea in 2007.<ref>{{cite magazine| url=http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-08/ff_jimgray?currentPage=all| title=Inside the High Tech Hunt for a Missing Silicon Valley Legend|date= 24 Jul 2007|author= Steve Silberman|access-date= 3 Feb 2015| magazine= Wired}}</ref>

Gray contributed to several major database and transaction processing systems. [[IBM System R|IBM's System R]] was the precursor of the [[SQL]] relational databases that have become a standard throughout the world. For Microsoft, he worked on [[TerraServer-USA]] and [[Sloan Digital Sky Survey#Data access|Skyserver]].

[[Roger Sippl]] described Gray as among the "technical gods in this industry", widely respected as a neutral arbiter on standards committees.<ref name="rdbmsgrowingandselling20070613">{{Cite interview |interviewer=Luanne Johnson |title=RDBMS Workshop: Growing and Selling |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102702567-05-01-acc.pdf |access-date=2025-05-30 |publisher=Computer History Museum |date=2007-06-13}}</ref> His best-known achievements include:
* [[ACID]], an acronym describing the requirements for reliable transaction processing and its software implementation
*[[Multiple granularity locking|Granular database locking]]<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Eswaran | first1 = K. P. | last2 = Gray | first2 = J. N. | last3 = Lorie | first3 = R. A. | last4 = Traiger | first4 = I. L. | title = The notions of consistency and predicate locks in a database system | doi = 10.1145/360363.360369 | journal = Communications of the ACM | volume = 19 | issue = 11 | pages = 624–633 | year = 1976 | s2cid = 12834534 | doi-access = free }}</ref>
* Two-tier transaction [[Commit (data management)|commit]] semantics
* The [[Five-minute rule]] for allocating storage
* [[OLAP cube]] operator for [[data warehouse|data warehousing]]
* Characterization of [[software bug]] types<ref>{{cite conference|last1=Gray|first1=Jim|title=Why do computers stop and what can be done about it?|conference=Symposium on Reliability in Distributed Software and Database Systems|year=1986}}</ref>

He assisted in developing [[Virtual Earth]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sigmod.org/sigmod/record/issues/0303/Gray_SIGMOD_Interview_Final.pdf|title=Interview with Jim Gray for ACM SIGMOD Record, March 2003 as part of Distinguished Database Profiles|first=Marianne|last=Winslett|author-link=Marianne Winslett|website=sigmod.org|access-date=2007-02-14|archive-date=2009-11-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091106153532/http://www.sigmod.org/sigmod/record/issues/0303/Gray_SIGMOD_Interview_Final.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>[http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=168181 Interview] on [[MSDN]] [[Channel 9 (discussion forum)|Channel 9]], Behind the Code, March 3, 2006</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/05/30/jim_gray/|title=Deconstructing databases with Jim Gray|work=regdeveloper.co.uk}}</ref> He was also one of the co-founders of the [[Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research]].