Acknowledgments

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Mindy, Alexander, and Nikolas Millsap

My wife and my boys are an inspiration to me each day, and I want to acknowledge the sacrifice they've made to make this project possible. I wrote this book on their time, and I hope that the results of this project in some way pay them back for all the time they have let me invest into it. Thank you, Mindy, Alex, and Nik.

Van and Shirle Millsap

At the beginning of every school year, my parents would take me into school and introduce themselves to my teachers . On the way to school, they would always tell me the same thing:

There are two answers to every question your teachers will ask you while you're in school. There's the correct answer, and there's the answer that the teacher wants. I expect you to know them both.

Thank you, Mom and Dad. You have no idea how much you've helped me in this lifetime.

Jeff Holt

Of the many blessings bestowed upon hotsos.com in its three years , none is more important than to have secured the participation of one Mr. Jeffrey L. Holt. Jeff was one of the top performance analysts in that 85-person group that I left at Oracle. He is now our Chief Scientist at hotsos.com . In the past three years, Jeff's principal job has been to teach me how to optimize an Oracle system. My job has been largely to deactivate the intuitive part of Jeff's brain.

Jeff is one of those talented people who understands how to solve a problem long before he can explain how he did it. I'm an obsessive-compulsive pedant who spends more time trying to figure out why an answer is correct than he does trying to figure out the answer. I believe that if a method relies on its user 's intuition and experience, then the method is neither repeatable nor teachable. I believe that without rigorous elimination of experience, intuition, and luck from the performance improvement process, it is impossible to create an acceptably high-quality Oracle performance optimization method.

You can see, then, what Jeff has been dealing with. Jeff has been limitlessly intelligent and patient throughout the entire process of having the insides of his head taken out and put back in again lots of times. Thank you, Jeff.

Gary Goodman

Gary Goodman is my friend and co-founder of hotsos.com . Without the long walk that occurred back in the summer of 1999, there's no telling what I'd be doing today. Actually, without the long walk that occurred back in the summer of 1989, I might have never worked for Oracle Corporation. Without the job that Gary does every day, there would be no hotsos.com and no book that you're now holding in your hands. Thank you, Gary.

Mogens N rgaard

Mogens N rgaard is my award-winning friend from Denmark who first introduced me to the then- mysterious "Oracle wait interface." Mogens is the first human on the planet to require his entire technical staff at Oracle Corporation to use the wait interface and only the wait interface in diagnosing Oracle performance problems. Mogens is also the founder of the world-famous Oak Table Network (http://www.oaktable.net), a collection of people who I consider to be the dominant minds in the Oracle performance space. Without Mogens' friendship, support, and social arrangement-making, this book would probably have never happened . Thank you, Mogens.

Anjo Kolk

Anjo Kolk is the father of Oracle response time optimization methods . Since I first met Anjo sometime in the early 1990s, he has never balked at investing time from his busy schedule to teach my groups and me how things really work. Thank you, Anjo.

Virag Saksena

Virag Saksena is the first consultant in my System Performance Group at Oracle Corporation who showed me a glimpse of what the world of performance improvement projects could be like. Virag's talent is in a sense the spark that lit the fire that became this book. Thank you, Virag.

Jonathan Lewis, Connor McDonald, and Frank Hansen

For a multitude of reasons including their provision of feedback that improved the quality of this book. Thank you, gentlemen.

Jonathan Gennick and the staff at O'Reilly & Associates

Rick Greenwald told me that there are three types of book publishers in the world: those who publish a book that's worse than the author's original manuscript, those who publish a book that's as good as the manuscript, and those who publish a book that's better. Jonathan's leadership has made this book better than the one I would have written without O'Reilly.

I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the customers of hotsos.com , who have provided sustenance to my family and stimulation to my mind. Your support is the reason that the material in this book can exist. Finally, thank you to the many people who have taught me many things, including:

Steve Adams	Nancy Dushkin	Jonathan Intner
Micah Adler	Julian Dyke	Lynn Isabella
Philip Almes	Morten Egan	Ken Jacobs
Andy Bailey	Jean Emerson	Neil Jensen
Karla Baisey	Bj rn Engsig	Phil Joel
Vladimir Barriere	Dave Ensor	Gu mundur J ³sepsson
Ken Baumgardner	Barry Epstein	Derry Kabcenell
Curtis Bennett	Henry Fahey	George Kadifa
Darren Bock	Mark Farnham	Mike Kaul
Kenneth Brady	Robert Feighner	Brian Kush
Phillip Briggs	Peter Gram	Armand Sadat Kyaee
Michael Brown	Donald Gross	Tom Kyte
Tim Bunce	Kyle Hailey	Ray Lane
Dr. Burt Burns	Stephan Haisley	Sang Chul Lee
Lasse Christensen	Theresa Haisley	Jonathan Lewis
Carol Colrain	Ray Hamlett	Margaret Lewis
Rudy Corsi	Ahmer Hasan	Jim Littlefield
Carol Dacko	Jim Herndon	Juan Loaiza
Dominic Delmolino	Dave Herrington	Andrea Lopez
David Dempsey	Carol Hipp	Scott Lovingfoss
Kirti Deshpande	Dr. Myron Hlynka	Roderick Ma ±alac
Johannes Djern s	Torben Holm	Laura Mazzarella
Greg Doherty	Mark Horstman	Connor McDonald
Ellen Dudar	Mamdouh Ibrahim	Daniel Menasc
Rick Minutella	Marcela Studnicka
Michael M ller	Torfi “lafur Sverrisson
James Morle	Irfan Syed
Craig Newburger	Tony Taylor
Mark Pavkovic	Lawrence To
Charles Peterson	Dan Tow
Nagesh Pillarisetti	Joakim Treugut
Nick Popovic	Hank Tullis
Lyn Pratt	Peter Utzig
Darryl Presley	Gaja Krishna Vaidyanatha
Dr. Ray Quiett	Thierry Vergult
Willis Ranney	Michel Vetsuypens
Matt Raue	Dr. Anita Walker
Andy Rivenes	Dr. Bill Walker
Hasan Rizvi	Mike Wielonski
Jesse Ruder	Gerald Williamson
Bob Rudzki	Liz Wiseman
Sandy Sanderson	Brian Wolff
Matt Seaton	Graham Wood
Craig ShallahamerPete Sharman	Jimmy Harkey, for introducing me to the axiomatic approach to problem-solving
Robert ShawRoger Siemens	Rachel Rutti, for introducing me to Eli Goldratt's The Goal
Dr. John Slocum	The members of the Oak Table Network
Jerry Snow	The many contributing members of Oracle-L
Bill Stangel	And Gram... I miss you more than I ever imagined.
Jared Still

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