About the Authors
For more than 25 years, Karen Morton has worked in information technology starting out as a mainframe programmer, then developer, DBA, data architect, author, researcher, educator, and consultant. Having used Oracle since the early ’90s, she began teaching others how to use Oracle over 15 years ago. Today she is focused primarily on Oracle performance optimization, particularly in the areas of SQL tuning and understanding the Oracle optimizer.
Karen’s years of experience have meshed well into optimizing applications running on both non-Exadata and Exadata platforms. In her role as Senior Technical Consultant for Enkitec, an Oracle–centric consulting and services company, her deep knowledge of how SQL works and how Exadata features require a change in approach to many optimization efforts allows her to understand what to do and when to do it, regardless of whether the environment is Exadata or non-Exadata.
Karen is the co-author of three books from Apress: Beginning Oracle SQL, Expert Oracle Practices: Database Administration from the Oak Table, and Pro Oracle SQL. She’s a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups, a member of the OakTable Network, and an Oracle ACE.
Kerry Osborne began working with Oracle (version 2) in 1982. He has worked as both a developer and a DBA. For the past several years he has been focused on understanding Oracle internals and solving performance problems. He is an OakTable member and an Oracle ACE Director. Kerry is a frequent speaker at Oracle conferences. He is also a co-founder of Enkitec, an Oracle-focused consulting company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. He blogs at kerryosborne.oracle-guy.com.
Robyn Sands is a software engineer on Oracle’s Real-World Performance team. She has been working with Oracle since 1996, and has extensive experience in application development, large system implementations, and performance measurement. Robyn began her career in industrial and quality engineering, and has combined her prior education and experience with her love of data by searching for new ways to build database systems with consistent performance and minimal maintenance requirements. She is a member of the OakTable Network and co-author of three books: Expert Oracle Practices, Expert PL/SQL, and Pro Oracle SQL, all published by Apress.
Riyaj Shamsudeen is an industry-recognized RAC expert, database internals specialist, and performance tuning specialist with 20 years of experience in implementing, using, and tuning RAC and Oracle products. He is an Oracle ACE Director and proud member of the OakTable network. Riyaj has co-authored four books about Oracle Database and performance. He is an active blogger (at http://orainternals.wordpress.com), President of OraInternals, and a frequent international speaker in major conferences such as UKOUG, HOTSOS, OpenWorld, and RMOUG. Social: www.linkedin.com/in/riyajshamsudeen; @riyajshamsudeen.
Jared Still is a senior database administrator at Pythian. Jared has been working with databases since 1988, and with Oracle in particular since 1994, beginning with Oracle version 7.0.13. During that time, he participated in a wide range of database administration tasks, as is the norm at smaller companies. Data modeling, database design, and overcoming Compulsive Tuning Disorder (CTD) have all been part of the job. As part of the CTD recovery process, he began learning how databases—and Oracle in particular—actually work.
The revelation was that well-performing databases and applications do not happen by accident, but by design. And “by design” means that you must understand how databases work, and how to make efficient use of the SQL language to create scalable applications and databases. Jared’s goal for this book is to make it easier for developers and database administrators to understand and use advanced SQL syntax. There are many features that have been introduced since Oracle 8i, and yet they seem to be seldom used. This book should help rectify that.