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The animals on the cover of Oracle Database Administration: The Essential Reference are ladybug beetles (family Coccinellidae), also known as lady beetles or ladybird beetles. Due to an attractive appearance and a diet of plant-eating aphids (some females consume up to 75 a day), these small, red or orange black-spotted beetles rank high in global opinion polls, and are even associated in some cultures with Christian symbols. In German, ladybugs are called “Marienkafer,” or Mary’s beetle; in French, one name for them is “les vaches de la vierge” or Cows of the Virgin.
Ladybugs are effective in reducing garden pests and can be ordered from garden catalogs by the pound; they also frequently spend the winter inside people’s homes, which in Canada and the U.S. is said to bring good luck. Elsewhere, the beetles are thought to signify good weather, good harvest, or other good fortune.
There are thousands of ladybug species worldwide, and a few are plant eaters and pests themselves. Their colorful wing covers are more than just a pretty picture: predators generally avoid red or orange-and-black insects, as they tend to taste terrible. Other defensive maneuvers include playing dead, the production of a foul odor, and fierce-looking larvae.
Madeleine Newell was the production editor and copyeditor for Oracle Database Administration: The Essential Reference. Sheryl Avruch was the production manager; Ellie Fountain Maden, Nancy Kotary, and Nicole Arigo provided quality control. Robert Romano created the illustrations using Adobe Photoshop 4 and Macromedia FreeHand 7. Mike Sierra provided FrameMaker technical support. Seth Maislin wrote the index. Maureen Dempsey, Bette Hugh, and Michael Blanding provided production assistance.
Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book, using a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. The cover layout was produced by Kathleen Wilson with QuarkXPress 3.32 using the ITC Garamond font.
The inside layout was designed by Nancy Priest and implemented in FrameMaker 5.5.6 by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The description of ladybug beetles was written by Nancy Kotary.
The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Madeleine Newell) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, and Jeff Liggett.