About the Author

Arup Nanda became a production-support Oracle DBA in the spring of 1993 on Oracle Version 6, where Transaction Processing was an option (i.e., if you didn't purchase it, the entire table would be locked). Ever since, he has swum through the rough waters of many ORA-600s, corrupted disks, and lots of OOPS! while still maintaining his sanity. Arup specializes in such Oracle database areas as Disaster Recovery, High Availability, Real Application Clusters, Grid Control, and Security.

Arup is an active member of the user community (Independent Oracle Users Group and New York Oracle Users Group, for example); writes for several publications (including Oracle Magazine, DBAZine, and SELECT Journal); and speaks at many technical events (including Oracle Open World, IOUG Live!, and local events sponsored by NYOUG). Acknowledging his professional accomplishments and contributions to the user community, Oracle honored him with the title of "DBA of the Year" in 2003. He lives in Danbury, Connecticut with his wife Anindita and son Anish.

Steven Feuerstein is the author or coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices, Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs, Oracle PL/SQL Programming: A Developer's Workbook, Oracle Built-in Packages, and several pocket reference books (all from O'Reilly Media). Steven has been developing software since 1980, spent five years with Oracle (19871992), and serves as a Senior Technology Advisor to Quest Software. His products include utPLSQL (an open source unit-testing framework for PL/SQL) and Qnxo (an Oracle development toolkit that helps generate, reuse, and unit-test code http://www.qnxo.com). He has won numerous awards for his writing and trainings, offers a PL/SQL portal at http://www.oracleplsqlprogramming.com, and can be reached via email at [e-mail]. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Veva, and three cats. Two sons, Eli and Chris, orbit nearby.