Jeffrey D. Ullman — 2006 SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award

Jeffrey D. Ullman is the recipient of the 2006 SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award for his profound impact and numerous research contributions to the database field.

Jeffrey D. Ullman has been instrumental in the development of database research into a rich scientific discipline with rigorous formal foundations. Throughout the years, he has repeatedly set the agenda for database theory by identifying key concepts and central problems, initiating new directions of research, and developing basic algorithms. The list of his major research contributions is long and well known. His early foundational work on the relational model includes the notion of lossless joins, query optimization using tableaux, the concept of acyclic joins and schemas, the correct approach to “universal” relations, and many others. His paper on universality of data retrieval languages was the source of a whole research area on more powerful query languages and their expressiveness. He set a rigorous framework for the evaluation of logical/recursive queries, and developed basic optimization methods (magic sets). He has developed fundamental methods in all areas of databases that he has touched, including data mining, database analytics (data-cube algorithm), data integration.