Steve Adams runs a small consulting company, Ixora, that specializes in advanced Unix and Oracle performance tuning. He is based in Sydney, Australia but also works remotely for clients in America and Europe. Steve is a regular contributor to various Oracle discussion forums on the Internet, where he is widely regarded as the leading performance expert. His experience with Oracle dates back to version 3 (1984). However, most of his work has been in Unix performance tuning. His interest in Oracle--and Oracle internals in particular--was rekindled when working as the Unix performance expert on a benchmark of an Oracle-based application in 1995. He found the challenge of understanding Oracle performance to be extremely demanding and yet irresistible. Steve doesn't yet claim to have mastered the topic of Oracle performance, but he does have plenty of insight to share. He can be contacted directly at steve.adams@ixora.com.au or via his company's web site at http://www.ixora.com.au/.