As a database administrator on a financial IMS project about eight years ago, Mark Gurry was asked to investigate his company's database direction for the next five years. The number of users was up to 950, the cost of maintaining the mainframes was huge, and he'd heard about relational databases and downsizing. After much investigation, he chose Oracle, and has stuck with the system ever since. He has worked as Manager of Computing and Network Services, senior database administrator, senior Oracle technical support, and other jobs. He now has a small consulting company called New Age Consultants. Mark has worked for many large organizations and is currently working for Telecom Australia,… the largest computer site in Australia and one of the largest in the world. He has also spoken on tuning at Oracle user group meetings and has given internal tuning courses at several of his larger client sites. He has been a senior team member on award-winning systems that have been developed using Oracle.