[2][1][9][7] The son of two hardware store owners, Abiteboul attended high-school in Romorantin, and Higher School Preparatory Classes in Tours.

[12][3] Abiteboul is a senior researcher at the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA), the French national research institute focussing on computer science and related areas, and has been a professor of the Collège de France.

[14][15] In database theory, he has contributed a wide variety of results, the most recent on languages for the distributed processing of XML data.

In 2008, according to Citeseer, he is the most highly cited researcher in the data management area who works at a European institution.

[7] He frequently writes for French newspapers, including Le Monde,[17] Libération[18] and La Tribune[19] A member of the ARCEP, the independent agency in charge of regulating telecommunications in France,[20] Abiteboul has been an advocate of net neutrality.