Oracle PL/SQL Programming 2005 T

Steven Feuerstein is considered one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, having written nine books on PL/SQL (all from O'Reilly & Associates), including Oracle PL/SQL Programming and Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices. He has received various awards over the years for his work on PL/SQL, including Oracle Magazine PL/SQL Developer of the Year in 2003. He has taught thousands of PL/SQL developers and DBAs in seminars throughout US, Europe, Australia and Latin America.

Steven has been developing software since 1980, starting his career as a Fortran programmer at the University of Rochester, where he also received a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He moved to Chicago in 1981 and honed his programming skills at several Fortune 100 corporations. In 1987, destiny brought him to Oracle Corporation as a pre-sales technical consultant. He spent three years explaining Oracle 5.1, Oracle6 and Oracle7 to an eager (and, perhaps, unsuspecting) audience of software professionals. He then shifted focus from 1990-1992, developing a very early sales support application for the Oracle USA sales organization, thereby deepening his understanding of the Oracle PL/SQL language (and using his all-time favorite application development tool, SQL*Forms 3.0).

After leaving Oracle, Steven joined the legions of Oracle consultants, specializing in Oracle Forms, Oracle Reports and, of course, PL/SQL. After writing the first edition of Oracle PL/SQL Programming in 1994, his efforts shifted to full-time researching, writing and teaching about the PL/SQL language. For the last ten years, he has been publishing a steady stream of books, articles, presentations and PL/SQL utilities. Steven also hosts the Best Practice PL/SQL column on Oracle Technology Network. In 2000, he created and released as an open source project utPLSQL, the first publicly available unit testing framework for PL/SQL developers, and Ounit, a free graphical interface to utPLSQL. Steven is currently a a Senior Technology Advisor to Quest Software, where he offers strategic vision and direction on their Oracle development tools. His latest project is Qnxo, the world's first active mentoring product, which helps developers reuse code and generate code from patterns.

Bryn Llewellyn

Bryn Llewellyn is the Oracle PL/SQL Product Manager, Server Technologies Division, Oracle Corporation. Bryn has worked in the software field for 25 years. He joined Oracle UK in 1990 at the European Development Center in the Oracle Designer team. He transferred to the Oracle Text team and then into Consulting as the Text specialist for Europe. He relocated to Redwood Shores in 1996 to join the Oracle Text Technical Marketing Group. He has been the Product Manager for PL/SQL since 2001.

It's hard for Bryn to remember his life before Oracle. He started off doing image analysis and pattern recognition at Oxford University and then worked in Oslo, Norway, in the public sector and in a startup. Bryn programmed in Simula (its inventors were his close colleagues). This language was the inspiration for Smalltalk and C++.

Marcel Kratchovil

Marcel has been working in the IT industry for 17 years. From 1988 to 1994 Marcel worked for the Federal Government Department of Health and Family Services as a database administrator for ADABAS as well as Oracle on MVS, VMS and Windows NT platforms. In 1994 Marcel joined Oracle in the role of pre-sales technical working with Oracle on Windows NT and Unix. In mid 1998 Marcel left Oracle to start up his own research company called XOR, with the aim to develop new internet technologies based around the Oracle database. In 1999 he co-founded Piction which has been developing a web based digital image library for photo laboratories and museums. Piction has been expanded since then to include an e-business suite, an award winning shipping freight management system, school booking system, a venue management system and an administration module for sporting clubs.

Marcel has won awards for best paper at the Oracle User Group conferences in 1993 and 1999. In the last ten years he has presented twelve papers at these conferences in Australia and the United States. He has written over twenty papers and focuses his skills on developing the knowledgebase between DBAs and Developers. Marcel has developed training courses for both DBAs and Developers and regularly runs seminars and courses for Oracle around Australia. In 2004 Marcel won the Oracle PL/SQL Developer of the Year award.

In the last five years Marcel has been actively working on the development of technologies focused on the internet. He has developed web sites for the Canberra Raiders and local commercial and government industries. He has also been employed as a consultant to provide technical guidance on the development of internet sites for a number of federal government departments including: the Department of Health, Social Security, Defence, Patents and Trade, Austrade, DASFleet, Botanic Gardens, Geoscience, War Memorial and Immigration. He has also worked with local telecommunications companies and Toyota. He has also developed a comprehensive database change management system.

Marcel is currently the Treasurer of the ACT Oracle User Group after being President for three years. Marcel has also been an Oracle8i Database, Oracle9i Database Release 2, Oracle Database 10g Release 1 and Oracle Database 10g Release 2 beta tester working consistently with the latest Oracle technology. He holds a science degree from the ANU, majoring in Mathematics and Computing.