Acknowledgments

As you might expect, a tremendous number of people from the Perl and Oracle communities have helped us put this book together, including many of the creators of the actual tools discussed here. We cannot thank them enough (although we'll do our best). We also are very grateful to the whole O'Reilly editorial and production team.

From Andy

First of all I have to thank my wife and beg her not to throw me out of the house for having deserted our family (my son Ross, four-and-a-half, and daughter Ellie, two-and-a-bit) for the last six months while completing this magnum opus. I had thought my previous book, Oracle & Open Source, written with Sean Hull, was as tough as it would get on a family, but I was proved wrong. Daddy could often only be located by following the trail of pizza crumbs and Dr. Pepper cans from the fridge to the darkest recesses of the house where he hid, tip-tapping away on a variety of workstations. But all will be redeemed if you get as much out of this book as I have, in its long-fingered probings into the darkest recesses of Perl for Oracle DBAs. My wife Sue has been the magnificent rock upon which I built my effort, and without her and our beautiful children, you can just take everything else and give it all away. I am forever in their debt.

As with all O'Reilly books, this has also been an immense collaborative effort involving more than just the writing team of myself, Jared, and our omniscient editor, Debby Russell. I would like to thank Tim Bunce, the father of Perl DBI, for his help and support over the past five years, and everyone else who has helped us achieve our goal of producing this book, particularly our technical reviewers who did such a magnificent job under tight deadline pressure: Stephen Andert, Tim Bunce, Ben Evans, Lance Hollman, Thomas A. Lowery, Ilya Sterin, and Richard Sutherland.

Many others also helped us ensure that this book was both as accurate and as up-to-date as we could possibly make it. My deepest thanks to all of them: Dean Arnold, Jeffrey W. Baker, Doug Bloebaum, Ronald Bourret, Thomas Boutell, Hans-Bernhard Broeker, Alan Burlison, Damian Conway, Martin Drautzburg, Thomas Eibner, Kim Fowler, Andy Gillen, Lars Hecking, Russell Herbert, Roger Hipperson, Dan Horne, Jeff Horwitz, Sean Hull, Randy Kobes, Robert Lupton, Doug MacEachern, Edmund Mergl, Julian Moss, Alistair Orchard, Ian Pilgrim, Alan Ranger, Eric S. Raymond, Gerald Richter, Dave Rolsky, Dave Roth, Nick Semenov, Steve Shaw, Jonathan Swartz, Svante Sörmark, Jesse Reed Vincent, Adam vonNieda, and Ken Williams.

My future bar bill is now immense, possessing gravitational mass in its own right. However, before I finish, I have to thank our editor Debby Russell, who has done so much to support us and sculpt our natural techno-speak into what we hope you'll find to be an invaluable guiding light towards the Perl and Oracle mithril of a deep subterranean world. She also brought this book down from being a ridiculous 1,000-page cave troll into the more-or-less manageable wood-elf you hold in your hands without losing a single important point. And finally, I have to thank David Gray, for his album, White Ladder, without which the completion of my half of this book would have been simply impossible, Dr. Pepper or no Dr. Pepper.

From Jared

I must first thank my own personal goddess, my wife, Carla. Although her husband spent many early mornings, late nights, weekends, and even several days of vacation time over a period of months, sequestered away in his hobbit hole of a computer warren producing code and text, she remained supportive and understanding.

Next I must thank my coauthor Andy. A true human dynamo, Andy was a whirlwind of activity while we collaborated on this project, and a source of inspiration on several occasions. He and Debby Russell are responsible for bringing our massive first draft down to a manageable size.

Andy and I both owe a deep debt of gratitude to everyone who has assisted us in the creation of this book. Andy has already mentioned those who have given us direct help in this project. I would like to reiterate our thanks to Tim Bunce for his outstanding work on the Perl DBI and DBD::Oracle modules. I would take it even further and thank Larry Wall for the inspired moment when he first decided to create Perl.

Hats off to the entire open source community as well. Without the dedication and hard work of so many talented individuals, computing would be far less interesting. Trite? Maybe, but nonetheless sincere.

I'm grateful to my friends who listened patiently when they asked what "the book" was about when they learned I was working on one, even though they had never heard of Perl or Oracle, and for the fact they are still my friends, in spite of missed social occasions.

Finally, I thank my parents, Jerry and Betty. They had no idea that their combined genes would create progeny with a predilection for Perl, Unix, Linux, databases, and a fascination with ones and zeros arranged in meaningful patterns. Thanks Dad, thanks Mom.