PostgreSQL book completed though chapter 10

On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the first draft of my book through chapter 10.

Bruce, it's looking very nice!

Just browsing the TOC though, a couple of things struck me as odd/missing and
if I were reviewing the book when finished I'd query these!

First the pitch of the book seems a bit mixed. There is a lot of
introductionary material on how to create a table, joins etc. inthe early
chapters, but the book also covers quite advanced topics like user-defined
functions. The reader is either going to skip the early chapters, or get lost
in the later ones. If you really do want to cover such a broad spectrum, what
about splitting the book into Part I - Introducing RDBMS and Part II - Using
PostgreSQL (or something similar)

Information on primary/foreign key constraints only appeared under the
'Joining Tables' chapter - I don't know how complete this chapter is, but the
terms were defined with no suggestions about creating tables using these terms
or using other constraints.

I could see nothing about the object-relational features in terms of creating
tables, etc.

I would really like to see a PostgreSQL SQL reference as well - this I guess
would be taken largely from the man pages.

In summary, I like the style and the contents as far as it goes, but I think
there are some important things missing (judging from the TOC) and personally I
feel the organisation is a little odd.

Hope you feel these comments have been useful.

Best wishes,

Andrew

--
Dr. Andrew C.R. Martin EMail: a.c.r.martin@reading.ac.uk (work)
Lecturer in Bioinformatics andrew@stagleys.demon.co.uk (home)
University of Reading
Tel.: +44 (0)118 987 5123x7022 Fax: +44 (0)118 931 0180

On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the first draft of my book through chapter 10.

Bruce, it's looking very nice!

Just browsing the TOC though, a couple of things struck me as odd/missing and
if I were reviewing the book when finished I'd query these!

First the pitch of the book seems a bit mixed. There is a lot of
introductionary material on how to create a table, joins etc. inthe early
chapters, but the book also covers quite advanced topics like user-defined
functions. The reader is either going to skip the early chapters, or get lost

I am only going to cover the concept of them, not show how to do them.

in the later ones. If you really do want to cover such a broad spectrum, what
about splitting the book into Part I - Introducing RDBMS and Part II - Using
PostgreSQL (or something similar)

Information on primary/foreign key constraints only appeared under the

Well, I am working on the Performance/index section, which is still
pretty basic. I don't plan to get really into those advanced topics.

'Joining Tables' chapter - I don't know how complete this chapter is, but the
terms were defined with no suggestions about creating tables using these terms
or using other constraints.

I am going to do that after 7.0 is released. Contraints will be added
too.

I could see nothing about the object-relational features in terms of creating
tables, etc.

Well, I have inheritance mentioned.

I would really like to see a PostgreSQL SQL reference as well - this I guess
would be taken largely from the man pages.

Yes, man pages will be at the end of the book.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the first draft of my book through chapter 10.

New chapters include:

Chapter 7, Numbering rows: OID's, sequences

Chapter 8, Combining Selects: UNION, subqueries

Chapter 9, Data Types: types, functions, operators, arrays

Chapter 10,Transactions and Locks: transactions, locking

The books is accessible at:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html

Comments welcomed.

--
Bruce Momjian                        |  http://www.op.net/~candle
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
+  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
+  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

I just Finished reading your book, I did work along with the text up to
chapter
4. I hope to finish that up when I get the time. It is looking great.
I am a pgsql beginner and this book has help me out a lot.

I know that data modeling is a huge subject, but you might want to add a
small chapter on that subject.

I look forward to reading more drafts, and thank you for the great work
so far.

Richrad