SQL Tuning [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own
experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive
covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics,
breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The animal on the cover of SQL Tuning is a salamander. Though
mature salamanders bear a superficial resemblance to small lizards,
salamanders are not reptiles; rather, they are amphibians that retain
their tails as adults. Like all amphibians, a salamander begins life
underwater as a gelatinous egg and develops through a series of
stages. Newly hatched salamander larvae resemble tadpoles (the larval
form of toads and frogs) and breathe through gills. As they mature,
salamanders develop legs and lungs, which allow them to leave the
water and breathe air. But they remain in or around streams, rivers,
ponds, lakes, or moist woodlands throughout their lives. They must
return to a freshwater source to lay their eggs.

The most immediately recognizable difference between adult
salamanders and lizards is the former's lack of scales; a salamander's
skin is smooth and porous and is used to absorb moisture. Salamanders'
skin can be any of a variety of colors - from brown or black to yellow
or red - and is often covered with dark spots, bars, or stripes. As
they grow, salamanders molt their skin, usually every few days or
every few weeks. Salamanders also have the ability to shed and regrow
their tails and other parts of their body that become severed or
damaged. Unlike other amphibians, salamanders are carnivorous at every
stage of their life cycle (tadpoles are herbivorous), and their diet
consists of worms, insects, snails, and small fish.

Mature salamanders are usually about 4 to 8 inches long, though
they can be as short as 2 inches and as long as 70 inches. Most have
four legs, though some have only two forelegs. Their front feet each
have four clawless toes, while hind feet, when present, have five
toes. Salamanders are nocturnal and usually divide their time between
the land and water, though some live exclusively in the water and a
few are purely land-dwelling. When they swim, they make little use of
their limbs. Instead, they use their laterally compressed (i.e.,
taller than it is wide) tail and muscle contraction to propel
themselves through the water, as eels do. Some tree-dwelling
salamanders have prehensile tails, which they can use to grasp
branches.

The name salamander (from the Greek salamandra) originally
applied to a legendary creature that could live in and extinguish
fire. Aristotle is largely responsible for perpetuating this myth; in
his History of Animals, he supports the story that the salamander "not
only walks through the fire but puts it out in doing so." The
application of the name salamander to an actual amphibian was first
recorded in 1611, at which time the supernatural characteristics of
the mythological animal became attributed to the actual animal. The
common belief (mistaken, of course) that salamanders can endure fire
persisted well into the 19th century.

Brian Sawyer was the production editor and copyeditor for SQL
Tuning. Matt Hutchinson was the proofreader. Darren Kelly and Claire
Cloutier provided quality control. Angela Howard wrote the
index.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a
series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century
engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the
cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond
font.

Melanie Wang designed the interior layout, based on a series
design by David Futato. This book was converted by Julie Hawks to
FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray,
Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML
technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is
Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono
Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by
Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe
Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher
Bing. This colophon was written by Brian Sawyer.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari
production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Madeleine Newell)
using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and
maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, and Jeff
Liggett.