The Art of SQL

About the Author

STÉPHANE FAROULT first discovered relational databases and the SQL language back in 1983. He joined Oracle France in their early days (after a brief spell with IBM and a bout of teaching at the University of Ottawa) and soon developed an interest in performance and tuning topics. After leaving Oracle in 1988, he briefly tried to reform and did a bit of operational research, but after one year, he succumbed again to relational databases. He has been continuously performing database consultancy since then, and founded RoughSea Ltd in 1998 (http://www.roughsea.com).

Stéphane Faroult has written (in French) Fortran Structuré et Méthodes Numériques (Dunod, 1986, with Didier Simon) and a number of articles in English, in magazines such as Oracle Scene (the UK Oracle user group magazine) and Select (the North American Oracle user group magazine), as well as on the Web (including the online edition of Oracle Magazine). He has also been a speaker at a number of user group conferences in the U.S., in the UK, and in Norway.

PETER ROBSON graduated in geology from Durham University (1968), then taught at Edinburgh University, obtaining an M.Phil in geology in 1975. After working in Greece as a geologist, he specialized in both geological and medical databases at the University of Newcastle.

He has worked with databases since 1977, relational databases since 1981, and Oracle since 1985, in roles which included developer, data architect, and database administrator. In 1980, Peter ...