Charles Dye is the database architect for Excite, Inc. (www.excite.com), where he is responsible for the design and implementation of the databases theat supply content to some of the world's busiest Web sites. Prior to joining Excite, he was the senior database administrator for The Dialog Corporation. Charles also operates a small but growing consultancy with clients in the San Francisco Bay area and Hong Kong. Once upon a time, before fleeing the East Coast for California skies, Charles taught math and physics at the Georgetown Day School in Washington DC. Charles is a frequent speaker at regional and national Oracle events such as Oracle Open World and IOUG-A Live. His favorite topics are distributed databases in general and advanced replication in particular. He also writes for the Northern California Oracle Users Group newsletter and is an active contributor to the Oracle Internet list server. Look for Charles' upcoming O'Reilly book, Oracle Distributed Systems, available later in 1998. Charles lives in Los Altos, California, with his wife Kathy, daughter Natalie, and labrador Jed. You can email him at cdye@excite.com.