Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

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/ukfam.html.

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.