What I learned about deadlines...

I learned that I am not the only one :) Seth's blog is one of the ones I read every time. They are short, to the point and almost always meaningful to me. Deadlines are the greatest motivator for me - if I do not have a deadline for something, I can pretty much guarantee you I will not finish it. I set my own little deadlines for things just to get finished. Whenever someone asks me to do something for them - write a foreword, make a recommendation, whatever - I typically say "sure and what is the drop dead date". If they know me, they'll give me a date before the true 'drop dead' just to have it in a timely fashion (because the odds they see it before then are slim to none).

Speaking of deadlines, I just finished the 2nd edition of Expert Oracle Database Architecture. Right now, this minute. Just have to dot I's and cross T's now - a few final copy edits and it'll be done. This will be the blurb on the back of the book (which you can expect to see soon)

Expert Oracle Database Architecture

Dear Reader,
I have a simple philosophy when it comes to the Oracle database: you can treat it as a black box and just stick data into it, or you can understand how it works and exploit it fully. If you choose the former, you will, at best, waste money and miss the potential of your IT environment. At worst, you will create nonscalable and incorrectly implemented applications—ones that damage your data integrity and, in short, give incorrect information. If you choose to understand exactly how the Oracle database platform should be used, then you will find that there are few information management problems that you cannot solve quickly and elegantly.

Expert Oracle Database Architecture is a book that explores and defines the Oracle database. In this book I’ve selected what I consider to be the most important Oracle architecture features, and I teach them in a proof-by-example manner, explaining not only what each feature is, but also how it works, how to implement software using it, and the common pitfalls associated with it. In this second edition, I’ve added new material reflecting the way that Oracle Database 11g Release 2 works, updated stories about implementation pitfalls, and new capabilities in the current release of the database. The number of changes between the first and second editions of this book might surprise you. Many times as I was updating the material – I myself was surprised to discover changes in the way Oracle worked that I was not yet aware of. In addition to updating the material to reflect the manner in which Oracle Database 11g Release 2 works – I’ve added an entirely new chapter on data encryption. Oracle Database 10g Release 2 added a key new capability – transparent column encryption – and Oracle Database 11g Release 1 introduced transparent tablespace encryption. This new chapter takes a look at the implementation details of these two key features as well as manual approaches to data encryption.

This book is a reflection of what I do every day. The material within covers topics and questions that I see people continually struggling with, and I cover these issues from a perspective of "When I use this, I do it this way." This book is the culmination of many years’ experience using the Oracle database, in myriad situations. Ultimately, its goal is to help DBAs and developers work together to build correct, high-performance, and scalable Oracle applications.

Thanks and enjoy!