Acknowledgments

I would like to thank to Bill Schwimmer—my manager at MCI Systemhouse—for giving me the chance to become an Oracle Database administrator many years ago, the long-suffering editors at Apress, Jonathan Gennick, Jill Balzano, and Douglas Pundick who tore their hair and bit their fingernails as they waited for me to finish writing, technical reviewers Bob Bryla (11g edition) and Arup Nanda (the present edition) for their thorough and insightful reviews, and the production team at Apress who created the finished product.

I would also like to thank all the colleagues and friends who helped me with the 11g edition, including Allen Tran, David Wolff, Gary Sadler, Malathy Thiruloganathan, Manoj Joshi, Raghav Vinjamuri, Rajesh Talreja, Rich Headrick, Scott Alexander, and Terry Sutton.

And all the members of the Oracle community who helped me with the present edition, including Biju Thomas, Chris Stephens, Fuad Arshad, Herlindo Velazquez, Jeremiah Peschka, Max Scalf, Niall Litchfield, Paul Houghton, Riyaj Shamsudeen, Timur Akhmadeev, and Toon Koppelaars.

And especially Jimmy Brock.