High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Ralph Kimball (Born 1945) is an author on the subject of data warehousing and business intelligence. He is widely regarded as one of the original architects of data warehousing and is known for long-term convictions that data warehouses must be designed to be understandable and fast. His methodology, also known as dimensional modeling or the Kimball methodology, has become the de facto standard in the area of decision support. Compared with the approach of the other pioneering architect of data warehousing, Bill Inmon, Kimball`s approach is often wrongly characterized as a bottom-up approach.