Re: Book recommendation

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> People ask here about good PostgreSQL books, so I thought I would
> mention one I saw for the first time today. It was:
>
> PHP and PostgreSQL Advanced Web Programming
> by Ewald Geschwinde, Hans-Juergen Schoenig
>
> I was very impressed by the book. The title suggests it is PHP with
> PostgreSQL, but in fact it seemed more like PHP _and_ PostgreSQL,
> meaning they didn't present PostgreSQL just in passing as part of PHP.
> They gave it full treatment. For example, it had a nice section on
> PL/PgSQL.

I bought this book when I decided to go with PosgreSQL. One reason being
that there are very few recent books on PostgreSQL. I also bough the
"PostgreSQL Developer's Handbook" by the same authors.

I'm a total newbie with database so please keep this in mind when
reading my opinion of the books.

1- Buy "PHP and PostgreSQL", and skip the "Developer's Handbook". The
PHP book seems to have much more up-to-date info and sometimes goes into
more details than the Handbook strangely enough.

2- Neither of the books went into enough detail for for me. I'm the kind
of guy that needs two things, to be show *how* to do something and *why*
the way shown is a good (the best hopefully). I.e. I need to understand
the underlying mechanics of what I am doing/being shown.

3- PostgreSQL is full of features, very few of them are explained. I
didn't know there were so many built-in functions. I get most of my info
for built-in function from the Info Docs since the books barely
mention *any* functions.

4- They do have a section on PL/PgSQL but it really is lacking. After
reading it I can only program the most basic of functions. Worse ... I
still have no idea when I should be using PL/PgSQL.

5- A section on query optimization, or better yet how to read Explain's
output would seem to be a necessity but there's isn't one.

All in all I'd have to say it's probably the best book out there but
that's just because there really aren't any others. I was hoping for
more from it ...

Bruce's online book is almost as useful ...

But to be honest I needed some hand-holding and this gave it to me until
I started feeling comfortable with PG and until I found the mailing list :)

Jc