Re: postgresql book - practical or something newer?

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On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:53:25 -0500
Tom Hart <tomhart(at)coopfed(dot)org> wrote:

> Hey everybody. I was just informed that our organization has a credit
> at amazon.com and asked if I had any books I wanted. I've been
> thinking about getting a postgresql book, and from what I've seen and
> read Practical PostgreSQL seems to be the standard (as well as
> co-authored by Joshua Drake, somebody that has helped me many times
> on this very list) but the fact that it's based on 7.x worries me. I
> started using postgresql with 8.x on windows and I'm wondering if
> this book and it's teachings will help me or if I should look at
> something targeted at 8.x or windows. What do you guys think?

Pratical PostgreSQL is still a good reference but you can use the free
web version as a reference. It lacks a lot of information that
is very useful (ex, the books has zero idea of pg_stat_*). The Korry
Douglas book is still reasonably relevant (as it covers 8) and is also
a good book.

I find that the best way to get what you need, is to read the fine
manual from postgresql. Yes, its massive, unwieldy and in a lot of
ways counter-intuitive (to a newbie) but if you have the terminology
down you aren't going to find a more comprehensive text.

Plus, when you find things that don't quite make sense you can submit
a doc patch to make the docs that much better.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

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