Acknowledgments

It was a great pleasure working with the Oracle Press team at Osborne. Jeremy Judson, Athena Honore and Ross Doll helped us in keeping up with the project schedule. Special thanks to Pamela Woolf and her team for all their contributions. We thank Ron Wohl, EVP, E-Business Suite for writing the foreword and providing his encouragement. Finally we thank Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle Corporation for giving us an opportunity to be a part of such an outstanding company.

—Bastin Gerald, Nigel King, Dan Natchek

Prior to joining Oracle, I spent four years in Sundaram Clayton Ltd and I thank my friends and former colleagues there, where I gained a lot of insights into the modern manufacturing technologies. I’d like to thank Venkat Subramaniam for the confidence he had in me, and for encouraging me to participate in various cross-functional projects that helped me acquire this knowledge. Truly, this knowledge provided the launch pad for my career in software.

During my tenure in Oracle Consulting, I had the opportunity to study and understand diverse business practices at various client locations. The implementations helped to hone my Oracle Applications knowledge. I thank all my fellow consultants and project managers for this.

After joining Applications Development, my primary role has been to design applications. I had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest software designers. Thanks to all of them for sharing their knowledge with me. Thanks to Nigel King, my co-author for guiding me through the various designs. I thank Jeff Barton and Kurt Robson for allowing me to author this book.

Milan Bhatia helped a lot with timely reviews and encouraging e-mails during the authoring process. I thank him for that. I thank Richard Rodgers, Amin Sikander, and Vishy Parthasarathy for spending their valuable time in reviewing the material.

I thank all my friends, especially Sathish, Manoj and Naveen, for their encouragement. I am very grateful to my wife Jacintha, daughter Nikita, and our family members for their support and encouragement. It would have been lot harder to achieve this feat without the support and encouragement of my family and friends.

—Bastin Gerald; Fremont, California; November, 2001

I really hope that this book makes the random walk of my career look like a series of planned moves. I have many people to thank for their knowing or unknowing contribution to the knowledge I have gained along the way. Many of the companies now exist in different forms and some of my greatest mentors are sadly no longer with us. Most notable to thank are the happy folks at Philips Industrial Electronics for letting me loose on the New Commercial System project, Mary Campbell and Mike Evens of Business Technology Consultants for starting my career in applications, and Jimmy Moyer of Jeyes Group plc for giving me my first international assignment. My instructors; Master Johnson, Master Kahn, and Mr. Kitagawa have been a constant statement of human possibility to me. Their guidance is with me always. I need to thank Kurt Robson Vice President of Design and Architecture for his momentary lack of judgement in recruiting me into development, showering me with intractable problems ever since and granting his permission to write the book.

My thanks to my colleagues in this venture, messes Gerald and Natchek. Their knowledge and application humble me. I must thank Alison Schofield and Leena Subramanian for the reviews beyond the call of duty by. My thanks goes out to Danial Soosai for his guidance on Demand Planning. It really is impossible to work at Oracle and not have the brilliance of the people around you reflect, however, dully from your surface.

The patience of my beautiful wife Anita is without measure. Her support for the moody man locked away in his office deserves accolade that is beyond this world to give. I hope my son forgives me for the hours spent away from play.

Nigel King; San Mateo, California; November, 2001

Writing a book like this taught me more than I ever imagined—it taught me how much I still can learn about the Oracle product suite. My thanks to the development teams that provided us such rich subject matter; I hope we have done it justice.

Oracle has such a wealth of talent in its employees and its customers that acknowledging everyone who has helped me in my career and with this project would fill another book. I thank all the educators, consultants, and customers with whom I have worked; they provided a cumulative perspective that would take many lifetimes to acquire on my own. At the risk of offending through omission, I give special mention to the following people: Michael Alfano, who prided himself on hiring good people—I hope I’ve lived up to your expectations; Nadeem Syed, Roger Goossens, Scott Malcolm, and the APS team—thank you for your patience and support; John Paramore, Nancy Beck, Rod Sernett, and countless other email junkies at Oracle—many thanks for your dedication and willingness to share your knowledge with Oracle and its customers; Terry Most and the management team—thanks for helping shepherd this book through the Oracle approval process.

My sincere gratitude to Arthur Fink, who took a chance on an aspiring writer many years ago; thank you for your open-mindedness and for giving me my big break.

And very special thanks to my loving wife, Sally, without whose infinite patience, encouragement, and critical copy editing this work would not have been possible.

Dan Natchek; Brookfield, Wisconsin; November, 2001