This book celebrates Michael Stonebraker’s accomplishments that led to his 2014
ACM A.M. Turing Award “for fundamental contributions to the concepts and practices
underlying modern database systems.”
The book describes, for the broad computing community, the unique nature,
significance, and impact of Mike’s achievements in advancing modern database
systems over more than forty years. Today, data is considered the world’s most
valuable resource, whether it is in the tens of millions of databases used to manage
the world’s businesses and governments, in the billions of databases in our
smartphones and watches, or residing elsewhere, as
yet unmanaged, awaiting the elusive next generation of
database systems. Every one of the millions or billions
of databases includes features that are celebrated by
the 2014 Turing Award and are described in this book.