postgresql book - practical or something newer?
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?
--
Tom Hart
IT Specialist
Cooperative Federal
723 Westcott St.
Syracuse, NY 13210
(315) 471-1116 ext. 202
(315) 476-0567 (fax)
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On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:53:25 -0500
Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.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
- --
The PostgreSQL Company: Since 1997, http://www.commandprompt.com/
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL SPI Liaison | SPI Director | PostgreSQL political pundit
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Joshua D. Drake wrote:
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Hash: SHA1On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:53:25 -0500
Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.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
- --
The PostgreSQL Company: Since 1997, http://www.commandprompt.com/
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL SPI Liaison | SPI Director | PostgreSQL political pundit
I've checked out the docs online, and they've helped me a great deal.
I've also read excerpts from the free online version of practical. I'll
stick with my current strategy of online docs/mailing list for now.
BTW, thanks for not completely plugging your book. Have you guys
considered authoring another on 8.x?
--
Tom Hart
IT Specialist
Cooperative Federal
723 Westcott St.
Syracuse, NY 13210
(315) 471-1116 ext. 202
(315) 476-0567 (fax)
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On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:03:29 -0500
Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.org> wrote:
I've checked out the docs online, and they've helped me a great deal.
I've also read excerpts from the free online version of practical.
I'll stick with my current strategy of online docs/mailing list for
now.BTW, thanks for not completely plugging your book. Have you guys
considered authoring another on 8.x?
I try to be reasonable (no laughing people :)). It's on the list, just
like everything else. I doubt I would ever publish through a
traditional house those. Something more along the lines of Lulu where
the book can give the most use to the community.
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
- --
The PostgreSQL Company: Since 1997, http://www.commandprompt.com/
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL SPI Liaison | SPI Director | PostgreSQL political pundit
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On Jan 29, 2008 6:16 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
I try to be reasonable (no laughing people :)).
Oh it's hard, so very, very hard!
:-)
/D
On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 19:16 +0000, Dave Page wrote:
On Jan 29, 2008 6:16 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.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>
"Ow Mun Heng" <Ow.Mun.Heng@wdc.com> writes:
<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.
I always thought one of the best things about the manual was that it has tons
of examples. Arguably too many examples for a reference manual but personally
I find it easier to learn from examples than reference text anyways so I
appreciate it.
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.
Actually there are several other books, but they're mostly out of date. This
is the biggest source of the problem you're complaining about I think. Most of
the features you're looking for documentation for will be from the last 2-3
years and it takes about that long for books to get into print.
In fact I think most of the features you'll look for examples of will be from
the last 1-2 years. When 8.3 comes out people will be looking for whole books
on XML functionality, tsearch implementations, etc, and there will be nothing
aside from the manual since they're all brand new features.
--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com
Ask me about EnterpriseDB's On-Demand Production Tuning
On 30/01/2008 11:27, Gregory Stark wrote:
In fact I think most of the features you'll look for examples of will be from
the last 1-2 years. When 8.3 comes out people will be looking for whole books
on XML functionality, tsearch implementations, etc, and there will be nothing
aside from the manual since they're all brand new features.
Isn't this the idea of the interactive online docs? People can add stuff
they find useful for others. The PHP docs have tons of extra snippets
added by users - some dross, granted, but there's a lot of good stuff
there too.
Ray.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland
rod@iol.ie
---------------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 15:54 +0800, Ow Mun Heng wrote:
<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.
With respect, I have to disagree here. The strength of PG's
documentation is, in fact, one of the key reasons I switched my company
completely off a commercial RDBMS and onto PostgreSQL. In my opinion,
PostgreSQL has, hands-down, the best documentation of any FOSS package
I've used, and it's better than much commercial documentation too. The
development group seems to be be uncompromising in its dedication to
keeping the documentation up-to-date, accurate, and thorough.
You should see what some of these commercial vendors try to pass off as
documentation! It's awful.
I don't disagree with your point that it's not robust with examples of
"exactly how a particular problem can be solved". But I think there are
enough, and more importantly, I don't think problem-solving is an
important focus for a manual (that's why 3rd party books exist). The
manual needs to be *the* reference document so that end users don't need
to read source code in order to understand how the system works.
Example-oriented documentation has a tendency to skimp on the reference
material and leave big gaping holes, in my experience. I like the
reference focus of the existing PostgreSQL manual very much.
--
Jason Topaz
topaz@panix.com
On Jan 30, 2008 11:35 AM, Raymond O'Donnell <rod@iol.ie> wrote:
On 30/01/2008 11:27, Gregory Stark wrote:
In fact I think most of the features you'll look for examples of will be from
the last 1-2 years. When 8.3 comes out people will be looking for whole books
on XML functionality, tsearch implementations, etc, and there will be nothing
aside from the manual since they're all brand new features.Isn't this the idea of the interactive online docs? People can add stuff
they find useful for others. The PHP docs have tons of extra snippets
added by users - some dross, granted, but there's a lot of good stuff
there too.
It most certainly is, please, add away! The comments are moderated, so
hopefully there's not too much dross in ours!
/D
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:27:20 +0000
Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
"Ow Mun Heng" <Ow.Mun.Heng@wdc.com> writes:
<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.I always thought one of the best things about the manual was that
it has tons of examples. Arguably too many examples for a reference
manual but personally I find it easier to learn from examples than
reference text anyways so I appreciate it.
Evil is in the details. Some examples don't really show off the power
of postgresql.
Sometimes you look at an example, you know other related stuff and
say... mmm I know I can push this further but how?
How/where is it possible to submit doc patches? Even for older
versions?
There were things I didn't find so easy to understand/guess in the
manual, no rocket science, I took note of them or I just found
external pages that actually explained how to do that and I think
their place should actually be in the manual.
BTW examples are a sort of specification too. I wouldn't
underestimate their more formal value. So I think they should be part
of *the* reference documentation with example output as well.
They shouldn't be of the kind "how-to" but of the kind "you can't
push the syntax further and this is what you'd expect as an output".
Many things are already there in the "VI Reference section" but some
are not, especially in the "V Server programming" part.
--
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it
On 30/01/2008 12:12, Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote:
Many things are already there in the "VI Reference section" but some
are not, especially in the "V Server programming" part.
+1
The Server Programming section is where we really need lots of examples.
Ray.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland
rod@iol.ie
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
Tom Hart <tomhart@coopfed.org> wrote:
[...]
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.
I find the manual answers just about everything I've needed to answer.
Personally though I find
the on-line version somewhat slow/cumbersome to find what I'm looking for.
Using Windows as my desktop machine (servers running Linux) I found the
most accessible form
of the manual was that distributed with pgAdminIII. Until recently they
shipped a fully
searchable Windows Help version of the latest manual which was fantastic.
Unfortunately pgAdmin has now removed that section of the manual and
simply links to the
Postgres web-site. I can understand it was some work to put it in each
time - but it was
very useful. So much so when I get a chance I intend to find an older
copy of pgAdmin and
install just the manual from it.
Has anyone else generated a Windows Help version of the manual?
Is there a source version of the files used to generate it (pgAdmin
people?)? I'd be interested in
the amount of work needed to create the file - if not excessive I might
volunteer to get it done
again if people other than me might find it useful.
Pete
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
- --
The PostgreSQL Company: Since 1997, http://www.commandprompt.com/
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
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Peter Wilson
T: 01707 891840
M: 07796 656566
http://www.yellowhawk.co.uk The information in this email is
confidential and is intended for the addressee/s only. Access to this
email by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended
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contained in or attached to this email.
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:27:20 +0000
Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> wrote:BTW examples are a sort of specification too. I wouldn't
underestimate their more formal value. So I think they should be part
of *the* reference documentation with example output as well.
They shouldn't be of the kind "how-to" but of the kind "you can't
push the syntax further and this is what you'd expect as an output".
In the manual yes, but I think there's definately a need for a howto
document, something that demonstrates how to handle typical database
functionality in PgSQL. Many of the people I've convinced to start using
PostgeSQL spend the first week or so asking me questions on how to do
basic things in PostgreSQL. When I say that there's a manual, the
complaint usually is what I've noticed myself: the manual is great for
looking up individual facts, but your problem may consist of 15 facts and
it's up to you to connect the dots.
This can be very confusing and discouraging to the average MySQL migrator
(ugh, I said the M word :) ) What people like about the books is that the
books usually tackle reallife problems from start to finish.
Shurely the PgSQL community must be able to piece together something like
that? It doesn't have to be a paper-book, although there are companies
that print on demand and ship directly to the customer.
Isn't there a wiki somewhere that we can fill with reallife stuff? Then
all 8.3 stuff could be added there to, even before 8.3 is released.
Import Notes
Resolved by subject fallback
On Jan 30, 2008 12:45 PM, Peter Wilson <petew@yellowhawk.co.uk> wrote:
Has anyone else generated a Windows Help version of the manual?
We distribute it with PostgreSQL - it's just not integrated with the
pgAdmin help any more. You can even tell pgAdmin to use that if you
don''t wish to use the online help.
Regards, Dave.
Am Mittwoch, 30. Januar 2008 schrieb Raymond O'Donnell:
Isn't this the idea of the interactive online docs? People can add stuff
they find useful for others.
Well, not really, for better or worse. Each release, we take the comments and
either fold them into the main documentation or delete them. So
the "interactive" feature is more of an easier way to submit additions or
corrections; it is not meant to add a user-edited extra dimension to the
documentation material.
The well-hidden techdocs section of the web site is supposed to allow users to
submit tips, articles, and the like, but I'm not sure how accessible that is.
--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
Am Mittwoch, 30. Januar 2008 schrieb Ivan Sergio Borgonovo:
How/where is it possible to submit doc patches?
pgsql-docs@postgresql.org -- The process is mostly the same as for normal
code. The Developer section of the web site gives you more information.
--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
Am Mittwoch, 30. Januar 2008 schrieb Peter Wilson:
Has anyone else generated a Windows Help version of the manual?
It can be built from the source code using the "make htmlhelp" target in
doc/src/sgml/. I don't know how to get from there to the final format,
though. I understand it is proprietary.
--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/
Dave Page wrote:
On Jan 30, 2008 12:45 PM, Peter Wilson <petew@yellowhawk.co.uk> wrote:
Has anyone else generated a Windows Help version of the manual?
We distribute it with PostgreSQL - it's just not integrated with the
pgAdmin help any more. You can even tell pgAdmin to use that if you
don''t wish to use the online help.
Hi Dave,
good to know it still exists.
Is it only distributed with the Window distribution?
I only run Postgres on Linux boxes, but use a Windows desktop machine.
Is there a place where I can just download the .chm file without having
to install Postgres on Windows?
All the best
Pete
Regards, Dave.
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T: 01707 891840
M: 07796 656566
http://www.yellowhawk.co.uk The information in this email is
confidential and is intended for the addressee/s only. Access to this
email by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended
recipient, you must not read, use or disseminate the information
contained in or attached to this email.
On Jan 30, 2008 1:34 PM, Peter Wilson <petew@yellowhawk.co.uk> wrote:
Dave Page wrote:
On Jan 30, 2008 12:45 PM, Peter Wilson <petew@yellowhawk.co.uk> wrote:
Has anyone else generated a Windows Help version of the manual?
We distribute it with PostgreSQL - it's just not integrated with the
pgAdmin help any more. You can even tell pgAdmin to use that if you
don''t wish to use the online help.Hi Dave,
good to know it still exists.Is it only distributed with the Window distribution?
Yes, at present. I guess it's something we could add to the website though.
/D
