Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The illustration on the cover of Oracle Parallel Processing is a wasp and a wasp nest. The paper wasp (Polistes fuscatus aurifer and Polistes apachus) is the most common of the social wasps. As their name implies, paper wasps make their nests out of paper, or rather, chewed wood and plant particles combined with saliva to make a paper-like paste. Wasp nests are usually the size of a person's outstretched palm and are shaped like an umbrella. They hang under building eaves, roofs, and tree branches and are constructed with multiple tiers of vertical cells. A single nest houses anywhere from 15 200 wasps.

Paper wasps are social insects, indicated both by their caste system (made up of one or more queens, a few drones, and many workers) and by their food sharing. Drinking only liquids (either flower nectar or other insects' blood), adult wasps share their food with the young by regurgitating it. The young then produce a saliva that is 50 times more nutritious than the original nectar. Adults complete the cycle by receiving that saliva from the young.

Female wasps are capable of inflicting a painful sting on humans, causing swelling and redness for a few hours. However, 3% of people may go into anaphylaxis from a sting. This life-threatening allergic reaction causes hives, severe swelling, blocked airways, circulatory failure, and possibly death. Approximately 50 people die in the U.S. each year from anaphylactic shock caused by a sting. Wasps, unlike honeybees, can sting multiple times. Honeybees can sting only once since their stingers have barbs, causing the stinger to remain in the skin and detach from the bee, effectively killing it.

Paper wasps are one of the less aggressive wasps. They rarely attack people and only do so to defend their nests (which happens if nests are in highly-trafficked areas such as windows, doors, or even fruit trees in orchards). All social wasps are beneficial to humans in that they prey on many harmful, plant-feeding, and nuisance insects. For this reason, social wasp colonies should be protected, though preferably in areas uninhabited by humans. Jeffrey Holcomb was production editor for Oracle Parallel Processing. Norma Emory was the copyeditor. Maureen Dempsey proofread the book. Emily Quill and Madeleine Newell provided quality control. Matt Hutchinson provided production support. Bruce Tracy wrote the index.

Edie Freedman designed the cover of this book. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

Alicia Cech and David Futato designed the interior layout based on a series design by Nancy Priest. Mike Sierra implemented the design in FrameMaker 5.5.6. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Rhon Porter using Macromedia FreeHand 8 and Adobe Photoshop 5. This colophon was written by Jeffrey Holcomb.

Whenever possible, our books use a durable and flexible lay-flat binding. If the page count exceeds this binding's limit, perfect binding is used.