Performance tuning is crucial in any modern relational database management system. This edition includes recent material on Oracle 7.3 and many Oracle 8 features and explores Oracle capabilities lie parallel server, parallel query and distributed database.

Mark Gurry runs a consulting company, Mark Gurry and Associates, which provides both short-term and long-term consulting in Oracle tuning; database administration; development standards; application architecture and design; and general site audits and health checks. His short-term site audits and internal skills transfer are keenly sought after in Australia, and he plans to expand into the U.S. and Europe in early 1997. Mark's customers are in many areas, including the stock market; banking and finance; telecommunications; emergency services; local, state and federal governments; computer hardware manufacturers, and many others. Many of the sites he consults at have as many as 5,000 concurrent users and data bases that are several hundred gigabytes in size. Peter Corrigan is a director of CPT Open Systems, a division of CPT Consulting, an Australian-based consulting company that is internationally recognized for its depth of performance tuning experience and quality service. It focuses on performance tuning of client-server systems, primarily Oracle and UNIX. Clients include major Oracle sites throughout Australasia, spanning numerous industry groups in both the government and private sectors. The company plans expansion into other countries in the near future. Peter's major roles include consulting in areas of environment performance audits; capacity planning; database administration; standards development; and application design and tuning of data warehousing and client-server systems. Peter is also the codeveloper of numerous Oracle soft ware developments, including performance tuning tools, application development tools, and the internationally acclaimed Rainbow Financial package. In addition to writing books, Mark and Peter are frequent speakers on the topic of tuning and programming at the Oracle Asia Pacific user group conferences and the local Victorian Oracle user group. They have also presented their own tuning course material for Oracle Australia throughout the Australian states. Peter Corrigan runs a small consulting company in Australia called Gauntlet Computers and works as a senior database administrator and project leader developing ORACLE applications and tuning systems. His speciality areas include client-server architecture and application downsizing, and he is the co-developer of the Rainbow Financial package, sold internationally. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of tuning and programming at the ORACLE Asia Pacific user group conferences and the Victoria ORACLE user's group. As a database administrator on a financial IMS project about eight years ago, Mark Gurry was asked to investigate his company's database direction for the next five years. The number of users was up to 950, the cost of maintaining the mainframes was huge, and he'd heard about relational databases and downsizing. After much investigation, he chose ORACLE, and has stuck with the system ever since. He has worked as manager of Computing and Network Services, senior database administrator, senior ORACLE technical support, and other jobs. He now has a small consulting company called New Age Consultants. Mark has worked for many large organizations and is currently working for Telecom Australia, the largest computer site in Australia and one of the largest in the world. He has also spoken on tuning at ORACLE user group meetings and has given internal tuning courses at several of his larger client sites. He has been a senior team member on award-winning systems that have been developed using ORACLE.