This episode features Jim Gray. He is a "Technical Fellow" in the Scaleable Servers Research Group (Sky Server, Terra Server) and manager of Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center (BARC). Jim has been called a "giant" in the fields of database and transaction processing computer systems. In 1998, Jim was awarded the ACM’s prestigious A.M. Turing Award.

Before joining Microsoft, Jim worked at Digital Equipment Corp (DEC)., Tandem Computers Inc., IBM Corp. and AT&T and he is the editor of the “Performance Handbook for Database and Transaction Processing Systems,” and co-author of “Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques.” In this interview, Jim is joined by former colleague from DEC and partner on the Terra Server project, Researcher, Tom Barclay.