Rick Greenwald - Oracle Essentials: Oracle Database 12c

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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 Oracles 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 edition of Oracle Essentials was a lengthy process. Jonathan wrote several of the original chapters, and he also reviewed some of the other original work and was quick to identify where he thought something was wrong. For Jonathan, wrong meant that the text could be misinterpreted and that further clarity was needed to make sure the right conclusion was drawn. The first edition became much more useful through Jonathans efforts. He was always quite proud of that effort. Even as the book changed with succeeding editions and Jonathan moved on to other companies, he continued to feel that this book remained an important accomplishment in his life.

Some explanations of how Oracle works are fundamental to the database and have not changed in subsequent editions of the book, so some of Jonathans original work remains here, although much of the surrounding text is now considerably different. Of course, some entire sections describing the complex steps that were once needed to manage and deploy older releases of the database are no longer relevant and thus are no longer included. Jonathan would probably view Oracles self-managing, self-tuning, and cloud-enabling improvements as incredible achievements, but would also wonder whether it is a good thing that people can know even less today about how the database works but still deploy it.

So, we introduce you to the fifth edition of Oracle Essentials . We have made many changes in this edition. Some, of course, result from changes in features in Oracle Database 12 c and the ways that you can now use and deploy the latest release of the database. But we have also made a considerable effort to go back and rewrite parts of the book that we did not believe possessed the clarity needed by our readersclarity that Jonathan would want in such a book. So, he influences us still.