David DeWitt
David J. DeWitt (born July 20, 1948) is an American computer scientist who focuses on database systems. He is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft and leads the Microsoft Jim Gray Systems Lab. Before Microsoft, he was the John P. Morgridge Professor Emeritus of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he started and led the Wisconsin Database Group for more than 30 years.
He earned his BA from Colgate University in 1970 and a PhD from the University of Michigan in 1976.
His research covers parallel databases, benchmarking, object-oriented databases, and XML databases.
Awards and honors: He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1998 and is a Fellow of the ACM. He won the ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award in 1995 and, in 2009, the ACM Software System Award for the Gamma parallel database system. He also received the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award in 2009 for his work in database systems.
Industry note: Some database vendors use a DeWitt Clause to restrict publication of benchmarks without their approval. This idea arose after Oracle, influenced by Larry Ellison, challenged DeWitt's 1982 Wisconsin Benchmark study that found Oracle's system performed poorly.
Personal: He enjoys swimming.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:24 (CET).