Thomas Kyte
OracleDatabase guru, VP of core technologies. The Tom behind http://asktom.oracle.com.
Author of:
- The new Effective Oracle By Design ISBN 0072230657 -- practical and detailed advice for building performing systems.
- Expert One-On-One Oracle ISBN 1590592433 -- an Amazon 5-star -- easily the best book on Oracle for programmers, re-released by apress
- Beginning Oracle Programming ISBN 186100690X -- a solid introduction to Oracle
- Countless Usenet posts.
Tom's philosophy: QuestionAuthority. Don't make a baseless claim: test it, benchmark it, prove it. Most claims written (about Oracle) by "experts" are wrong, unless they provide the code, logs and/or trace files. He suggests that most performance failures start with developers that treat databases as a black box. Why not learn what it can do for you instead?
Take a gander at his stuff, it really can teach you a lot about OracleDatabases.