First and foremost, I would like to thank and dedicate all my success to my maternal grandmother, Alamelu Ammal. Without her love and support my existence would not have been possible. I did not realize her value when she was alive.

I would like to thank and acknowledge the team that created a great product called OpenSSO. If you find this book useful, then the credit goes to this team. I take the responsibility for any omissions or errors that may have occurred inadvertently.

My sincere gratitude to Jamie Nelson, the then Director of Engineering, for allowing and encouraging me to work on this book, followed by Mike Hwa, Director of Quality, Yaqing Wang, VP of Quality, and Oracle Senior Management for permitting me to pursue this book.

I would like to thank all my current and erstwhile colleagues who I have worked with over the years. I learned something new from each one of you, and for that I am very grateful.

I owe many thanks and appreciation to my official reviewers, Peter Major and Xuekun Kou, for their valuable comments. I cannot thank the Packt crew enough, starting with Priya Mukherji, Usha Iyer, Zainab Bagasrawala, Poorvi Nair, Tarun Singh, and Technical Editors Kavita Iyer and Harshit Shah for their support and patience throughout the process.

Here goes my next set of acknowledgements which is of paramount importance. My parents Thangasamy and Hamsayal—I know how hard you worked to raise us, thank you for your selfless love and affection. My brothers, sisters-in-law, sister Alli, brother-in-law Devaraju, and my extended family folks back in India.

I owe my thanks to my in-laws, Kalimuthu, Revathy, sister-in-law Suba, and family. I am blessed to have such a close-knit family.

To my wife, if at all I am successful in life, it is not through sheer luck or brilliance, it is all because of my loving wife Ramya's support and endless love. She takes care of me like a child, starting with what I eat, what I wear, and so on and so forth. Ramya did help me write some scripts to test the samples in the book, and also provided comments about the draft from the reader's perspective. Whether I was working on the book or not, she always took care of the kids, their extracurricular activities amidst her own busy work schedule. Thanks Ramya, I am very fortunate to have you in my life.

To my kids Kavin chellam and Iniya kutti—they are the source of my energy and happiness. I know Kavin, I missed your soccer games, I also heard you saying 'Appa is glued to the computer'. I am sorry kids I could not play with you as much as we all wanted, and promise to make it up to you.

I could not conclude without thanking my friends (you know who you are) who invariably asked about my book and the deadlines. They checked on me more than my publishers. Thank you folks!

Hopefully, I have not forgotten anyone but if I have, it an oversight.