Oracle Essentials, 4th Edition

Preface

We dedicate this book to the memory of one of our original coauthors, Jonathan Stern. Jonathan unexpectedly passed away in March of 2007. Yet his memory lives on for those of us who knew him and, in many ways, for those who will read this book. Let us explain.

The original outline for this book was first assembled at the ubiquitous coffee shop located in the Sears Tower in Chicago. It was 1998 and the authors had gathered there with a common goal. We were all Oracle employees working in technical sales roles and had visited many organizations and companies. We found that many IT managers, Oracle database administrators (DBAs), and Oracle developers were quite adept at reading Oracle’s documentation, but seemed to be missing an understanding of the overall Oracle footprint and how to practically apply what they were reading. It was as if they had a recipe book, but were unclear on how to gather the right ingredients and mix them together successfully. This bothered all of us, but it particularly frustrated Jonathan.

Jonathan was the kind of person who sought to understand how things worked. Nothing delighted Jonathan more than gaining such an understanding, then spending hours thinking of ways to translate his understanding into something that would be more meaningful to others. He believed that a key role for himself while at Oracle was the transfer of such knowledge to others. He continued to perform similar roles later at other companies at which he worked.

Writing the first ...