I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation, first of all to my fellow co-author Mr. Syed Jaffer Hussain who was great to work with on this book. I would also like to thank everyone at Packt who made tremendous efforts for their patience and help in the editorial process. Last but not least, my heartfelt appreciation goes out to our fantastic technical review team of Oracle experts — Fairlie Rogo, Ronald Rood, and Ann L.R. Mckinnell — who provided tons of great feedback to ensure technical accuracy and quality. I also would like to dedicate this book to all fellow Oracle DBAs and consultants who work in the trenches to solve real world Oracle issues.

I also would like to thank the many Oracle professionals who have helped me as an Oracle professional over the years to make such a book like this possible, including Julian Dyke (Oracle RAC master extraordinaire), Alex Gorbachev, Doug Hahn, Tanel Poder, Arup Nanda, Robert Freeman, Tim Hall, and all of my current and past clients who allowed me to help them with their Oracle database challenges.

First and foremost, I owe a very big thank you to my wife Ayesha and my three sons (Ashfaq, Arfan, and Aahil) for sacrificing their invaluable time and allowing me to concentrate on the book. I am also thankful to Alinma Bank management; in particular Ahmed Darwish and my immediate boss Mr. Majed Saleh AlShuaibi for their constant encouragement and continuous support. My special thanks goes to my younger brother Sabdar and my friend Khusro Mohammed Khan (who are also Oracle DBAs) for preparing required platforms, testing codes and doing initial review of the chapters. I also want to thank all my colleagues, Mohammed Farooqui, Zaheer, Khaja Mainuddin, Shaukat Ali, Naresh Kumar Markapuram, Hussain AlKalifah, Faisal Bakhashwain, Naser Ali AlEssa, Mohammed Alsalahi, Wayne Philips, Chand Basha, Rizwan Siddiqi, Sadak, Anees, Shakir, Angelo G Train, Mohammed Khidir, Asad Khan, Ibrahim Ali, Rajesh Ankuru, Sandeep, Mohammad AlHiary, Ahmed Khanj, Ahmed Bakheet, Mohammed Azar, and other friends for their encouragement and motivation.

I thank all the staff at Packt Publishing who were involved with this book and special mention to James Lumsden, Kerry George, Meeta Rajani, Zainab Bagasrawala, and Azharuddin Sheikh for being patient with me during the course of this book.

Last but not the least, I also thank other RAC Book authors (not in any particular order), Murali Vallath, K. Gopalakrishnan, Nitin Vengulkar, Julian Dyke, Sandesh Rao, Arup Nanda, Bert Scalzo, Riyaj Shamsudeen, Tariq Farooq, and other Oracle experts worldwide for being my inspiration.