I would like to acknowledge my business partner and CEO of Piction, Erick Kendrick. I have been working with him for over twelve years and he has been instrumental in a lot of the designs as well as the implementation of the ideas presented in the book. Without his unconditional support in all the good and bad times, the ability to get to the stage of writing this book would not have been possible.

Special thanks go to all those in the Piction team: Jimmy Nguyen, Martin Channon, Serkan Harar, Lusana Ali, and Adam LaPorta, who have done the tough work and been able to embrace the vision and advance the concept of digital asset management systems, bringing forth leadership in this new technology.

Thanks also go to Chris Muir, Richard Foote, and Tim Hall who have sparred with me on a lot of the controversial issues that dealing with multimedia can raise. By debating with them honestly, I have been pushed outside the box and into new territory. In addition Steven Feuerstein has always expressed his support and helped where he could regarding multimedia in the database. Also, I would like to thank Victoria Lira and Lillian Buziak of the Oracle ACE Director program who over the last five years have work tirelessly to help me promote the usage of multimedia inside the Oracle Database.

Special mention goes to my mother, my sister, her husband, Andrew and children, Jeremiah, Elisha, and Abigail, who have accepted me unconditionally, which also gave me the strength and motivation to do the hard, long yards and put this book together. I would like to recognize my brother Mark Kratochvil who worked with Piction in the early days and is a keen and talented photographer. It is my hope that his family will get to see this book.

I would like to acknowledge the reviewers who have been challenged by the unique and varying content within the book. They are Ben Van Eyle, April Chin, Tim Hall, Pete Sharman, and Tony Quinn.

And finally I would like to thank Liza Sherd who was there for me during the hard times and who I know will be there for me when I need it the most.