Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The insect on the cover of Mastering Oracle SQL is a lantern fly. The lantern fly is mostly tropical, with a wingspan of up to six inches. The lantern fly's elongated head is an evolutionary adaptation called automimicry, in which parts of the body are disguised or artifically shifted to other areas to confuse predators: the lantern fly's head looks like a tail, and its tail looks like a head. On the rear it has artificial eyes and antennae.

Colleen Gorman was the production editor and copyeditor for Mastering Oracle SQL. Sheryl Avruch and Ann Schirmer provided quality control. Tom Dinse wrote the index.

Ellie Volckhausen and Emma Colby designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from Johnson's Natural History. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. Neil Walls converted the files from Microsoft Word to FrameMaker 5.5.6 using tools written in Perl by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, and Neil Walls, as well as tools written by Mike Sierra. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Colleen Gorman.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Madeleine Newell) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, and Jeff Liggett.