Michael Rys is Principal Program Manager in the SQL Server RDBMS team. He is responsible for the Beyond Relational Data and Services scenario that includes unstructured and semi-structured data management, search, Spatial, XML and others. He has been program manager for the XML features in SQL Server 2000 to 2008 such as FOR XML, the XML data type and XQuery and for Spatial Indexing in SQL Server 2008. He also represents Microsoft Corp. in the W3C XML Query working group and the ANSI SQL standardization effort. He joined Microsoft in 1998 after performing research in the areas of object-oriented and semi-structured databases, multi-level transaction management, and distributed heterogeneous information integration at Stanford University (as post-doc) and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich where he earned his Ph.D.

Michael is a senior member of ACM and a member of IEEE and has given many presentations and contributed to several books on XQuery and XML and databases. His weblog can be found at http://sqlblog.com/blogs/michael_rys/default.aspx and can be followed at @SQLServerMike (when he finds time to tweet).