The books in O'Reilly's Oracle series are authoritative -- they tell the whole story about complex topics, ranging from performance tuning to the use of packages in PL/SQL to new technologies like Power Objects. And they're independent; they're alternatives for readers who need to know how products and features really work. They're packed with real-world advice and techniques from practitioners in the field, and they come with disks containing code you can use immediately in your own applications. O'Reilly is the alternative for Oracle people who need to solve problems -- and solve them now.Performance tuning is crucial in any modern relational database management system. Too many organizations respond to Oracle performance problems by throwing money at these problems -- by buying larger and more expensive computers or by hiring expert consultants. But there's a lot you can do on your own to increase dramatically the performance of your existing system. Whatever version of Oracle you're running -- from Version 6 to Oracle8, proper tuning can save your organization a huge amount of money in additional equipment, extra memory, and hardware upgrades.The first edition of Oracle Performance Tuning became a classic for programmers, managers, database administrators, system administrators, and anyone who cares about improving the performance of an Oracle system. This second edition contains 400 pages of updated material updating on Oracle features, incorporating advice about disk striping and mirroring, RAID, client-server, distributed databases, MPPS, SMPs, and other architectures. It also includes chapters on parallel server, parallel query, backup and recovery, the Oracle Performance Pack, and more.

As a database administrator on a financial IMS project about eight years ago, Mark Gurry was asked to investigate his company's database direction for the next five years. The number of users was up to 950, the cost of maintaining the mainframes was huge, and he'd heard about relational databases and downsizing. After much investigation, he chose Oracle, and has stuck with the system ever since. He has worked as Manager of Computing and Network Services, senior database administrator, senior Oracle technical support, and other jobs. He now has a small consulting company called New Age Consultants. Mark has worked for many large organizations and is currently working for Telecom Australia, the largest computer site in Australia and one of the largest in the world. He has also spoken on tuning at Oracle user group meetings and has given internal tuning courses at several of his larger client sites. He has been a senior team member on award-winning systems that have been developed using Oracle.

Peter Corrigan runs a small consulting company in Australia called Gauntlet Computers and works as a senior database administrator and project leader developing Oracle applications and tuning systems. His speciality areas include client-server architecture and application downsizing, and he is the co-developer of the Rainbow Financial package, sold internationally. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of tuning and programming at the Oracle Asia Pacific user group conferences and the Victoria Oracle user's group.