James Martin (author)

For other people named James Martin, see James Martin (disambiguation).

James Martin (1933) is a British Information Technology consultant and author, who was nominated for a Pulitzer prize for his book, The Wired Society: A Challenge for Tomorrow (1977).

Biography

James Martin was born in 1933 in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, England. He earned a degree in physics at the Keble College, Oxford.

He joined IBM in 1959. In 1981, with Dixon Doll, Martin established the information technology consultancy firm DMW (Doll Martin Worldwide), which was later renamed James Martin Associates (JMA). Martin also co-founded a software company, KnowledgeWare, with Fran Tarkenton.

Martin also founded Database Design Inc. (DDI), which competed with Knowledgeware in areas such as database design tools.

He lives on his own private island, Agar’s Island, in Bermuda. According to Computerworld’s 25th anniversary issue, he was ranked fourth among the 25 individuals who have most influenced the world of computer science.

Work

He has written extensively on his computer systems design methodology information engineering and also on computer-aided software engineering, of which some say he is the father. He was an early promoter of fourth-generation programming languages. He was also the primary author of the Rapid Application Development methodology.

His book The Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for Ensuring our Future was published in 2006.

James Martin Associates (JMA)

With Dixon Doll, Martin established the information technology consultancy firm DMW (Doll Martin Worldwide) in 1981. This was later renamed James Martin Associates (JMA), and its clients have included the United States and United Kingdom governments.

In the late 1980s, JMA was divided into two halves: one half was sold to Texas Instruments Software in 1991, while the other part remains independent and is now known as Headstrong. In the UK, the DMW information technology consultancy was re-formed in the late 1980s and is still operating successfully as an independent company.

Information Engineering

Information Engineering (IE) is an approach to designing and developing information systems. It has a somewhat chequered history that follows two very distinct threads. It is said to have originated in Australia between 1976 and 1980, and appears first in the literature in 1981 in the Savant Institute publication Information Engineering by James Martin and Clive Finkelstein.

Information Engineering first provided data analysis and database design techniques that could be used by database administrators (DBAs) and by systems analysts to develop database designs and systems based upon an understanding of the operational processing needs of organizations for the 1980s.

The Finkelstein thread evolved after 1980 into the data processing (DP)-driven variant of IE. From 1983 till 1986 IE evolved further into the business-driven variant of IE, which was intended to address a rapidly changing business environment. The then Technical Director, Charles M. Richter, from 1983 to 1987, played a significant role by revamping the IE methodology as well as designing the IE software product (User-Data) which helped automate the IE methodology, opening the way to next generation Information Architecture.

Computer-aided software engineering

The Martin thread in Information Engineering was strategy-driven from the outset and from 1983 was focused on the possibility of automating the development process through the provision of techniques for business description that could be used to populate a data dictionary or encyclopedia that could in turn be used as source material for code generation. The Martin methodology provided a foundation for the CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) tool industry.

Martin himself had significant stakes in at least four CASE tool vendors—InTech (Excelerator), Higher Order Software, KnowledgeWare, originally Database Design Inc, (Information Engineering Workbench) and James Martin Associates, originally DMW and now Headstrong (the original designers of the Texas Instruments’ Information Engineering Facility and the principal developers of the methodology).

At the end of the 1980s and early 1990s the Martin thread incorporated Rapid Application Development (RAD) and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and soon after also entered the object oriented field.

Rapid Application Development (RAD)

Rapid application development is a term originally used to describe a software development process introduced by James Martin in 1991. Martin’s methodology involves iterative development and the construction of prototypes. More recently, the term and its acronym have come to be used in a broader, generic sense that encompasses a variety of techniques aimed at speeding application development, such as the use of web application frameworks and other types of software frameworks.

RAD approaches may entail compromises in functionality and performance in exchange for enabling faster development and facilitating application maintenance.

The James Martin 21st Century School

With the largest alumni philanthropic donation ever made to a UK university, Martin gave $100 million in 2005 to help establish The James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford; its stated goal is to “formulate new concepts, policies and technologies that will make the future a better place to be.” In March 2009, Martin pledged further $50 million in matched funding.

Publications

Martin has written over a hundred books many of which were best sellers in the information technology industry. A selection:

• 1965. Programming real-time computer systems.
• 1967. Design of real-time computer systems.
• 1969. Telecommunications and the computer.
• 1971. Future developments in telecommunications
• 1972. Introduction to teleprocessing.
• 1972. Systems analysis for data transmission.
• 1973. Design of man-computer dialogues.
• 1973. Security, accuracy, and privacy in computer systems.
• 1978. Wired society.
• 1981. End-user's guide to data base.
• 1980. Managing the data base environment
• 1981. Information engineering.
• 1982. Viewdata and the information society.
• 1983. Software maintenance : the problem and its solutions. With Carma McClure.
• 1984. Recommended diagramming standards for analysts and programmers : a basis for automation
• 1985. Diagramming techniques for analysts and programmers. With Carma McClure.
• 1985. Fourth-generation languages.
• 1985. System design from provably correct constructs : the beginnings of true software engineering.
• 1986. Wired world : towards a greater understanding of the world information economy. With Simon Grant and the Atwater Institute.
• 1988. Structured techniques : the basis for CASE
• 1989. Strategic information planning methodologies.
• 1992. Object-oriented analysis and design.
• 2006. The Meaning of the 21st Century.

External links

• James Martin Personal Website
• The James Martin 21st Century School
• Institute for Science, Innovation and Society
• Webcast about his vision for the 21st century