T. William Olle


T. William Olle was a British computer scientist and consultant and President of T. William Olle Associates, England.

Biography

Bill Olle was educated at Boston Grammar School. He received an M.Sc. degree in 1954 and a Ph.D. degree in 1957, both in Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, which involved extensive programming work on the Manchester University Electronic Computer.
In 1957, he moved to the Netherlands, where he worked in computing for a NATO organization. In 1964, he moved to the United States, where he was employed by Control Data Corporation in Palo Alto, California until 1966. From 1967 to 1971, he was employed by the RCA Corporation in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In 1972, after a year in Norway, he returned to the UK to establish his own consultancy firm, T. William Olle Associates, specializing in database management applications and information systems methodologies. He consulted clients in Europe, Australia, and Canada, and presented lectures on database topics around the world. He retired in 1993.
Beginning in the 1970s, Olle became active in the CODASYL organization as Chairman of its Systems Committee and spearheaded the preparation of two early analytical reports on "Generalized Database Management Systems". He represented the British Computer Society on IFIP TC8 from its inception in 1977. He was also active in database standards work in ISO and was chairman of the BSI standards committee for many years.
Bill Olle was awarded an honorary doctorate by Middlesex University in 2001.

Work

Olle's research interest in the field of computing started in 1953 at the University of Manchester. In the 1960s, he became interested in database applications, and after his retirement in the 1990s, he focused on the history of computing and on "professionalism in the computer field".

Publications

Olle published numerous books and articles. The following is a selection: