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 animal on the cover of Oracle SQL*Loader: The Definitive Guide is a scarab beetle. There are nearly 30,000 members of the scarab beetle family, and over 1,200 in North America alone. This large, heavy-bodied beetle is classified in the order Coleoptera, family Scarabaeidae. Many scarab beetles are brightly colored, and some are iridescent. In North America, the largest scarabs are the Hercules beetle and the closely related elephant and rhinoceros beetles. The males of these species have prominent horns.

Many scarabs are scavengers, living on decaying vegetation and animal dung. They are consider efficient recyclers and valuable for reducing disease-breeding waste. Some of the scavengers of the scarab family use their front legs to gather dung and roll it into a ball. They carry the ball underground and use it as food and a place to lay their eggs. The Mediterranean black scarab's apparently magical ability to reproduce from mud and decaying organic materials led the ancient Egyptians to associate the scarab with resurrection and immortality. The beetles were considered sacred, and representations in stone and metal were buried with mummies.

A member of the North American scarab family plays a key role in Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Gold-Bug." In his search of Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, a scarab beetle is William Legrand's mysterious guide to the buried treasure of Captian Kidd. Colleen Gorman was the production editor and the copyeditor for Oracle SQL*Loader: The Definitive Guide. Sarah Jane Shangraw and Linley Dolby provided quality control, and Leanne Soylemez was the proofreader. John Bickelhaupt wrote the index.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is from Cuvier's Animals. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

Melanie Wang designed the interior layout based on a series design by Nancy Priest. Anne-Marie Vaduva converted the files from Microsoft Word to FrameMaker 5.5.6 using tools created by Mike Sierra. The text and heading fonts are ITC Garamond Light and Garamond Book; the code font is Constant Willison. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. This colophon was written by Colleen Gorman.