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 Application Server 10g Essentials is a praying mantis. These large, predatory insects are widely scattered throughout the world; some of the approximately 1,500 species are endangered. They have highly specialized prehensile legs, with elongated front segments that allow them greater reach. Their long neck-like thorax enables them to swivel their heads completely to the rear, making them the only insects who can look directly behind themselves.

The word "mantid" is Greek for "prophet" or "seer." The insects were so named because the position in which they hold their legs while at rest or preparing to attack their prey gives them the appearance of folding their arms in prayer. In African art, the praying mantis is often depicted as a god or spirit.

Mantises lie in wait and then quickly pounce on their prey, giving them no time to flee. It is not uncommon for a mantis to hold onto its prey with one leg while going after another with the second. They eat almost anything--insects, small reptiles, small birds, and other mantids. Females often eat their mates during copulation; once the process has begun, she bites off his head. The male's copulatory activity isn't curtailed by this, and in some species is stimulated, because it's controlled by a ganglion center completely distinct from that controlling the head. By eating her mate, the female ingests extra protein to nourish her eggs.

A praying mantis will lay 1,000 to 2,000 eggs, protected in foamy, papery capsules that hold 100-200 eggs each. The eggs are laid in the fall and hatch in the spring. Young mantises immediately begin hunting and disperse themselves over a wide area, presumably to avoid fratricide. Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the production editor and proofreader, and Audrey Doyle was the copyeditor for Oracle Application Server 10g Essentials. Matt Hutchinson and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Ellen Troutman wrote the index.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 6.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

Melanie Wang designed the interior layout, based on a series design by David Futato. This book was converted by Julie Hawks to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Clairemarie Fisher O'Leary.