Re: postgresql book - practical or something newer?

From: Ow Mun Heng <Ow(dot)Mun(dot)Heng(at)wdc(dot)com>
To: Dave Page <dpage(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Cc: "Joshua D(dot) Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>, Tom Hart <tomhart(at)coopfed(dot)org>, Postgres General List <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: postgresql book - practical or something newer?
Date: 2008-01-30 07:54:02
Message-ID: 1201679642.24945.7.camel@neuromancer.home.net
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On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 19:16 +0000, Dave Page wrote:
> On Jan 29, 2008 6:16 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > I try to be reasonable (no laughing people :)).
>
> Oh it's hard, so very, very hard!
>

But seriously, I've ranted on this some time ago( and you can tell that
I'm about to start again)

<rant>
One of the worst aspect of PG is the documentation, or the lack of it in
terms of "traditional" house. The Manual is fine and all, but in most
cases, what I find that it lacks is actually examples. Either examples
to show what it a particular field/query means but also as a way to show
exactly how a particular problem can be solved.

When I played with both MSSQL and MySQL, I had loads of books (and I
bought a bit of it too, didn't bother subscribing to safari, it just
ain't a book!) to be used as reference and what not.

In PG, all there is, is the manual, a book by Robert Treat, the Book
from Joshua, 1 or 2 other books authored by someone I can't remember etc
and that's about it.

Then I would have to go hunt(via google) for any bit of blog/
presentation slides from a meetup/talk etc for ways to find out how to
do a particular thing. (Thanks Bruce M, Thanks Robert T - excellent
partitioning talk!, Thanks PgCon!) and pore over those.

Other than that, it's more or less, "Bang you head here" and "send email
to the list and hope someone answers"

I hang on to my O'reilly "SQL Hacks" book tightly as it gives me
examples on how to solve a problem and even how other DBs solve it.

I wish there was a book like MySQL Cookbook (which I have a copy)
</rant>

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