Oracle"s Net8 technologies are what make Oracle databases more than just repositories of values. They facilitate communication between Oracle servers and their clients, as well as among servers for purposes of synchronization, replication, and load balancing. Oracle Net8 Configuration and Troubleshooting documents the Net8 software in full, explaining to system implementers and administrators what talks to what, and how. The emphasis is on design constraints--for example, the way many operating systems limit the number of simultaneous connections to a single process and so require multiple dispatcher processes. Diagnosis and repair of problems are also explored, and quite a lot of information about console utilities is included. Syntax statements and annotated lists of parameters complement the text in this book. You"ll probably learn the most about the subject that interests you by locating a page reference in the index, then reading straight through a couple of sections on either side of the reference--the pages are rich in information and casual detail. Of course, a book isn"t an O"Reilly system administration guide without configuration file documentation, and Oracle Net8 Configuration and Troubleshooting upholds the tradition with option-by-option coverage of the lines that must and can appear in the four key .ORA files: SQLNET, TNSNAMES, LISTENER, and NAMES. --David Wall Topics covered: Overview of Net8 The setup process Multi-Threaded Server (MTS) Integration with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Oracle Names Clustering for load balancing and redundancy