Author's Preface to the Second Edition

Within a year of the publication of the first edition, I was regularly being asked when I would produce a second edition. For a long time, I said that nothing had really changed for the DBA. But it has! In seven years, there have been seven major releases of PeopleTools. So many little things had changed that not only was there enough to justify a revision, but it had become essential.

In fact, when it came to actually revising the book, I was surprised by just how much I had to change. Some material has been removed because it is no longer relevant in PeopleTools 8.4. Some things have been amended because they are no longer completely true.

There is a lot of new material throughout this edition. Some of the new material has been discussed on my blog, but this new edition has allowed me to organize it coherently and put it into context. Two very significant additions relate to performance measurement: