We would like to thank the people who assisted in all stages of the researching, testing, writing, reviewing, and publication of this book. In particular, we would like to thank the Apress team of Lead Editor Jonathan Gennick and Coordinating Editor Anita Castro for their invaluable advice, guidance, and knowledge. We would like to thank Copy Editor Patrick Meader for the skill involved in blending our technical writing into a finished book. For the technical review, we would like to thank Bernhard de Cock Buning, Sandesh Rao, and Chris Barclay for their time in reading, commenting, and improving the meaning that we wished to convey. We would also like to thank Julian Dyke for his assistance in sharing research and seeing the project through to completion, and Markus Michalewicz, Frits Hoogland, Joel Goodman, Martin Widlake, and Doug Burns for inspiration and their help in putting the material together. Finally, we would like to recognize the contribution of the Oracle User Group in the UK and Europe and, in particular, contributors to the UKOUG Oracle RAC SIG: David Burnham, Dev Nayak, Jason Arneil, James Anthony, Piet de Visser, Simon Haslam, David Kurtz, Thomas Presslie, and Howard Jones.

Steve Shaw and Martin Bach

I would like to thank my wife, Angela, my daughter, Evey, and my sons, Lucas and Hugo, for their unwavering support, understanding, and motivation in enabling this edition of the book to be completed. I would also like to thank my parents, Ron and Carol, for their help in providing the time and space to write. On the technical side, I would like to thank my managers and colleagues of Intel enterprise software enabling for databases: Michael Vollmer, Alex Klimovitski, Andrew G. Hamilton, and Mikhail Sinyavin, and the Intel Winnersh UK team of Evgueny Khartchenko, Hugues A. Mathis and Nadezhda Plotnikova. I would also like to thank Christian Rothe and Jonathan Price of Oracle for assistance with Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM. Finally, I would like to thank Todd Helfter, the author of Oratcl, and the many of users of Hammerora worldwide for their contribution to the Oracle, Linux, and open source community.

Steve Shaw

I would like to thank my wife and son for their great patience and support during the time I was busy researching and writing this book. Without your support, it would not have been possible to finish it in time. I would, of course, thank a few people who have helped me get to where I am now.

Invaluable support at the university was provided by Prof. Dr. Steinbuβ, who first started my enthusiasm for the Oracle Database and Sushi. I can't forget Jens Schweizer, Timo Philipps, Axel Biesdorf, and Thorsten Häs for countless good hours in H105. I would like to thank the members of the technical team I worked with in Luxemburg: Michael Champagne, Yves Remy, and especially Jean-Yves Francois. Without you, I would have found it very hard to develop the same professional attitude to problem-solving and managing time pressure. I would also like to thank Justin and Lisa Hudd, Kingsley Sawyers, Pete Howlet, Dave Scammel, Matt Nolan, and Alex Louth for a lot of support during my first years in England. Also, for the work I did in London: Shahab Amir-Ebrahimi, David Marcos, Peter Boyes, Angus Thomas, James Lesworth, Mark Bradley, Mark Hargrave, and Paul Wright.