Steve Ries has been an Oracle DBA for 16 years, specializing in all aspects of database administration, including security, performance tuning and backup and recovery. He is a specialist in Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and has administered Oracle clustered environments in every version of Oracle since the creation of Oracle Parallel Server. Steve is the author of OCA Oracle Database 11g: SQL Fundamentals I: A Real-World Certification Guide, Packt Publishing. He holds five Oracle certifications as well as a Security+ certification. He currently consults for the Dept. of Defense, US Marine Corps, and holds a high-level security clearance. Additionally, Steve has been an adjunct instructor of Oracle technologies at Johnson County Community College for 9 years, where he teaches classes that prepare students for the Oracle certification exams. He was also a speaker at the 2011 and 2012 Oracle Open World conferences. Steve is a two-time, award-winning technical paper writer and the creator of the alt.oracle blog.