David Kurtz began working with version 5.1 of the Oracle database in 1989 in a small software house as an Oracle developer/database administrator working on assurance and insurance software. In 1996, he joined PeopleSoft U.K., starting out in support and gradually moving into consultancy over several years. Since there was virtually no internal documentation about how PeopleSoft related to the database, he started by working out the relationship between the application and database for himself. This led to fixing performance problems in PeopleSoft systems. Soon enough, David was spending all of his time on performance-related consultancy.David left PeopleSoft in 2000 to go into business for… himself as Go-Faster Consultancy Ltd. ( http://Go-Faster.co.uk ). There, he provides performance and technical consultancy, mostly to PeopleSoft users, mostly on Oracle. Since then, Kurtz has learned to apply principles of response-based performance, not just to the database, but holistically to the entire application stack.David has been a member of the U.K. Oracle User Group since 1994. He chaired the UNIX SIG between 2000 and 2006, and serves on the board of directors. He presents regularly at PeopleSoft and Oracle conferences and meetings. David is a member of the OakTable Network ( OakTable.net ) and is also an Oracle ACE Director.David started the lively PeopleSoft DBA Forum on Yahoo!( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psftdba ) following a roundtable discussion at a PeopleSoft conference in 2002, and it continues to be a valuable resource. He writes two blogs: PeopleSoft ( http://blog.psftdba.com ) and exclusively Oracle database ( http://blog.go-faster.co.uk ).