OracleNotes.com is the work of a small group of volunteers and countless visitors who have never met, but share a common vision. A vision where a community of seasoned Oracle DBA's can gather around a portal and share their experiences with one another.

Michael Ritacco, Founder
While pursuing a degree in Marketing at the University of Texas in Arlington, Michael began working for a corporate accounting software company. The position was in product distribution, with his primary responsibility to maintain the company's client database. Job responsibilities were simple at first, entering data and writing queries to produce reports. This soon turned into optimizing form layout for improved data entry efficiency and troubleshooting those often mysterious features of the database. It ended up being the challenge of administering the database that Michael enjoyed most, and he began to immerse himself in database technology discovering the power and complexity of Oracle databases. It was the challenging nature of Oracle that intrigued Michael and he knew that a career with Oracle databases was in his future.

Michael currently lives in the Houston area and can be reached at michael.ritacco@oraclenotes.com

Sundar Chitradurga, Senior Contributor
Sundar has been working with Oracle databases and related technologies for more than 7 years. He has extensive experience in PL/SQL, Java Stored Procedures, Oracle 9iAS and J2EE technologies. He has woked for such companies as Sonat Exploration and Enron Corp. He is now an IT Manager at RWE Americas, an energy trading company.

Donald Farland, Contributor
Don began working with computers in 1986, when his parents bought their first PC, a Tandy 1000EX. He bought his first modem, and quickly became enamoured with the "online world". In 1993, Don graduated from college and began a career as a volunteer paralegal for a small law office specializing in employment law and civil rights.

After three years of working two part time jobs and volunteering as a paralegal, Don needed to find a career he could live on. He went to work for an HMO, the antithesis of his former career. After two years, he still hadn't found his calling. In January of 1998, Don went back to school. This time it was to get his BS in Information Systems from the University of Massachusetts - Lowell. It was during this return to his roots in computing that Don was first introduced to UNIX and ultimately Linux.

In May 1998, he got a job providing software support and software training for a CAD software company. Within four months, Don was performing the duties of systems and network administrator. It was this position that ultimately led Don to explore the world of database technology. After a couple of months of toying with Visual FoxPro and MS Access, Don discovered that neither product would do what he needed them to. While on a business trip to Pittsburgh, Don wandered into a Barnes & Noble and picked up "Oracle8: A Beginner's Guide" from Oracle Press and was immediately hooked.

In August of 1999, with the blessing of his employer, but no financial assistance, Don enrolled in his first class through Oracle Education and began his personal quest for Oracle certification as a database administrator. On February 8, 2000, Don became an Oracle Certified Professional in Oracle8 Database Administration.

Don currently lives and works in southern New Hampshire where he is the UNIX Systems Administrator and DBA for a company that specializes in custom application engineering.