About James “Jim” Starkey
Jim Starkey grew up in River Forest, Illinois where he began programming in high school through project with Illinois Institute of Technology. He earned a degree in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin with highest honors.
His forty-year career in software engineering has focused on the intersection of networks, databases, and data access languages. He specializes in discovering the flaws in conventional wisdom.
In 1977, he created Datatrieve, demonstrating that the I.T. department need not have a monopoly on creating applications that store, analyze, and report on data. His work in databases showed that relational systems are not inherently slow and that data consistency does not require readers and writers to block each other's work.
More recently, he invented a new programming model for applications running on dozens of cooperating computers and built a distributed relational database on that model which is consistent, partition resistant, and available. Mr. Starkey holds several related patents.
