Oracle Database 11 g - Online Public Access Catalog

xxii■ACKNOWLEDGMENTSNothing I do in my personal and professional lives would be possible without the constantsupport and encouragement of my family. I’d like to express my gratitude for the love, affection,and sacrifice of my parents, Appa Rao and Swarna Kumari; my brothers, Hari Hara Prasadand Siva Sankara Prasad; and my sisters-in law, Aruna and Vanaja. At home, the love andsupport of my wife, Valerie, sustains me. Valerie’s support and immense sacrifices have beencrucial to the writing of this, as well as all my other books. Writing this book has meant timeaway from my children, Nina, Nicholas, and Shannon, and I can only promise that I’ll make it up tothem soon!—Sam R. AlapatiMost important, I want to thank my dear wife, Melissa, and our three boys, Isaiah, Jeremiah,and Noah, for their unceasing support during the project and sacrificing precious family time.Without their prayers and encouragement, I could not have completed this project.On a professional note, I would like to thank Leisa Pitner (http://leisapitner.com) forsurrendering nights to rush edits and revisions of the chapters on last-minute notice. Leisa Pitnerhas served in several key roles in information technology ranging from business process engineerto director of internal applications for a 1 billon dollar software company. She has successfullyfacilitated the transformation of process and culture across multiple industries, leveraging hersystem’s design and business process engineering background.I would like to thank David Sweet, director of development practice at Novara Solutions,for contributing the PL/SQL and Java portions to Chapter 11. David has been working withOracle since 1987 and, in my opinion, is one of the most elite developers in the industry.I would like to extend an appreciation to Nitin Vengurlekar, member of the technical staffat Oracle and author of the Automated Storage Administration book. We shared a few battlescars of the book-authoring process. His review of Chapter 9 provided great insight and enhancedthe overall quality of the chapter.I can’t forget the folks on Oracle’s High Availability product development team, especiallyJoe Meeks and Larry Carpenter, for reviewing Chapter 10 and encouraging me to go forward.Thank you for the valuable input and recommendations.My sincere gratitude goes to Debbie Migliore, director of Server Technologies Program Office,and her team for providing exceptional beta support and directing me to the right resourcesover the years. Debbie’s team works implausible hours and plays a crucial role in deliveringquality to each Oracle release.I cannot say enough good things about the project management and editorial staff at Apress:Jonathan Gennick, Sofia Marchant, Kim Wimpsett, Kelly Winquist, and April Eddy. Thankyou all for your “extra mile” efforts and at times holding my hand through some of the editingprocesses to provide a superior book.Last but not least, thank you, Kirti Deshpande, for the last-minute review of Chapter 8. Kirtiis well recognized in the Oracle industry for his books: Performance Tuning 101 and OracleWait Interface.—Charles Kim