Rick Cole

Lead Research Staff

Understand and optimize database queries.

About

Rick Cole is a Research Scientist at Tableau Software where his focus is on the intersection of database query processing and visual analysis. Current research areas involve query processing in Tableau’s data ecosystem, such as machine learning and data sketching for query optimization, error analysis via fine-grained data lineage, and interactive query visualization.

Rick earned his PhD and MS degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was a member of the Volcano project for research into efficient, extensible tools for query processing. His research explored the optimization of dynamic query evaluation plans for robust query performance.

Rick has over 30 years of experience in databases, query processing, and query optimization. Before joining Tableau, he co-founded Bright Vine, a data integration startup for cooperative analytics in diverse big data ecosystems. At ParAccel, he led development of a novel query optimization framework. Prior to ParAccel, he was a technical leader at IBM, Informix Software, and Red Brick Systems.