Mike(Michael) Kruckenberg is a long-time MySQL devotee who has used MySQL personally and professionally since the early days of web-based applications. Besides having been the go-to guy for all things MySQL at his day (and night) jobs over the years, Mike is an active member of the MySQL community. In addition to being the coauthor of Pro MySQL, he is a coauthor on the MySQL Cluster Certification Study Guide and periodically writes about MySQL for Linux Magazine. He did the technical review for the soon-to-be published Expert MySQL (Apress) on MySQL source code modifications. Mike is a member of the MySQL Speakers, Writers, and Experts Guilds, regularly presents at tech conferences, and actively writes about MySQL and other (mostly) technical things at mike.kruckenberg.com. Jay Pipes is the North American Community Relations Manager at MySQL. Coauthor of Pro MySQL (Apress, 2005), Jay has also written articles for Linux Magazine and regularly assists software developers in identifying how to make the most effective use of MySQL. He has given sessions on performance tuning at the MySQL Users Conference, RedHat Summit, NY PHP Conference, OSCON, and Ohio LinuxFest, among others. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife, Julie, and his four animals. In his abundant free time, when not being pestered by his two needy cats and two noisy dogs, he daydreams in PHP code and ponders the ramifications of __clone().