Acknowledgments
Tariq Farooq
I would like to express boundless thanks for all good things in my life to the Almighty
ALLAH, the lord of the worlds, the most gracious, the most merciful.
I dedicate this book to my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Abdullah Farooq; my wonderful
wife, Ambreen; my awesome kids, Sumaiya, Hafsa, Fatima, and Muhammad-Talha; and
my nephews Muhammad-Hamza, Muhammad-Saad, Muhammed-Muaz, Abdul-Karim,
and Ibrahim, without whose perpetual support this book would not have come to fruition.
My endless gratitude to them as I dedicated almost two years of my spare time to this
book, most of which was on airplanes and in late nights and weekends at home.
My heartfelt gratitude to my friends at the Oracle Technology Network (OTN),
colleagues in the Oracle ACE fellowship, my coworkers, and everyone else in the
Oracle community, as well as in my workplace for standing behind me in my quest to
bring this project to completion, especially Dave Vitalo.
I had been thinking about writing on the Oracle troubleshooting and problem solving
subject area for quite a while. The project was finally kick-started when I met Paulo
Portugal in San Francisco at Oracle Open World 2013. The one thing that I am very
proud of is the amazing ensemble of some of the best minds in the industry, including
Oracle ACEs, ACE directors, and Ph.D.s coauthoring and technically reviewing this
book from start to finish.
From inception to writing to technical review to production, authoring a book is a
complex, labor-intensive, lengthy, and at times painful process; this book would not have
been possible without the endless help and guidance of the awesome Addison-Wesley
team. A very special thanks goes out to Greg Doench, executive editor, and all the other
folks at Addison-Wesley, who stood like a rock behind this project. Kudos to the
technical reviewers, book reviewers, and editorial teams at Addison-Wesley for a great
job on this book.
Many appreciative thanks to my buddies, coauthors, and technical reviewers—Paulo
Portugal, Mohamed Houri, Mike Ault, Jim Czuprynski, Syed Jaffar Hussain, Kamran
Agayev, Anju Garg, Bert Scalzo, and Guy Harrison—for the amazing team effort that
allowed us to bring this book to you, my dear reader. A special thanks to my friend and
fellow Oracle ACE Director Biju Thomas for authoring Chapter 13.
Finally, I thank you, my dear reader, for joining us on this knowledge-laden journey—
my sincerest hope is that you will learn from this book and that you will enjoy reading it
as much as we did researching and authoring it.
Mike Ault
I would like to acknowledge Texas Memory Systems (TMS) and IBM for allowing me
the freedoms to continue writing and researching Oracle-related topics.