Oracle SQLPlus [Electronic resources] : The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition نسخه متنی

Second Edition Acknowledgments

Many hands helped prepare this revision of Oracle SQL*Plus:
The Definitive Guide . To begin, I want to thank my editor,
Debby Russell, for her continuing faith in me over the years, and for
her support of my many writing projects despite my occasionally
hare-brained ideas. Editors have as much to do with good books as
authors, and my editor is simply one of the best.

Special thanks go out to Tom Kyte and Gregor Theis for their diligent
efforts in reviewing the second edition chapters as I revised and
wrote them. Tom and Gregor are excellent Oracle technologists. Their
comments and suggestions helped me a great deal to improve the text.

Thanks, too, to Alison Hollaway, Oracle's Product
Manager for SQL*Plus, and to Christopher Jones, who is one of the
SQL*Plus developers. Alison and Chris read draft chapters and
answered many questions relating to the behavior of SQL*Plus.

Arup Nanda, Don Bales, Dick Goulet, Peter Linsley, Ken Jacobs,
Srinivasan Vasan, and Jeff Thomas were gracious enough to answer
questions I had about SQL*Plus, or about their use of specific
SQL*Plus features, such as SET MARKUP.

Lex de Haan, a member of the Dutch national body of the ANSI/ISO
standardization committee for the SQL Language, took the time to read
and comment on the Lightning SQL Tutorial that you find in Chapter 4. Lex is an Oak Table (www.oaktable.net) member and stands among the
best SQL experts whom it is my privilege to know.

You can thank Matt Williams, my neighbor and aspiring artist down the
street, for the three-headed null monster that you find in Chapter 4. His sketch captures well the pitfalls and
perils that nulls and their associated three-valued logic bring to
the writing of SQL. Thanks Matt. I'll think of your
monster from now on every time I write an IS NULL predicate.

I can't thank Myron Hlynka of Windsor, Canada,
enough for his help in choosing the list of Ukrainian historical and
literary figures from which I drew names for my example data for this
book. Myron went well beyond the call of duty. He helped me choose
the names of interesting and significant Ukrainians and contributed
the biographical sketches in the section "What About Those Names?". Myron maintains an
extensive list of famous Ukrainians, which you can find at http://www2.uwindsor.ca/~hlynka/ukfaml.

Not all names came from Myron! Young Andrew Hlynka,
Myron's son, is the one who thought to mention Igor
Sikorsky. I have fond memories of watching helicopters as a kid, as
they airlifted heavy equipment into a factory near my home. Thanks,
Andrew!

As with the first edition, I'm greatly indebted to
my immediate family members, especially my wife Donna. Without
Donna's steadfast support I
wouldn't be published at all, I'm
sure. Proverbs 12:4 is surely right in saying that
"An excellent wife is the crown of her
husband." And don't let me forget
the kids! Jenny and Jeff tolerate many evenings without me, but, just
as important, give me a reason to get away from the computer once in
awhile. Thanks, to all of you. I'm blessed to have
such a good family.

Lastly, I want to thank all the many readers of the first edition.
Because of you, this book was successful, and its success was one of
the watershed events that led me down the path of becoming a
part-time writer, something that has made a huge difference in my
life, and for which I'm ever grateful. I very much
enjoy all the reader emails you've sent over the
years, from those asking questions related to the book to those
offering suggestions for future editions. Keep those emails coming,
and thanks for reading.