Hi

I'm thinking of buying "Practical PostgreSQL"
from O'Reilly.

Has anyone got any comments on this book?
Can anyone suggest alternatives?

My level is best described as "intermediate".
Thanks in advance!


Thu, 27 Mar 2003 06:30:07 +0800
"Gary Hendricks" <ghendricks@yahoo.com>
What's a good PostgreSQL guide book?
Martha Stewart called it a Good Thing when"Gary Hendricks" <ghendricks@yahoo.com>wrote:
> I'm thinking of buying "Practical PostgreSQL"
> from O'Reilly.
>
> Has anyone got any comments on this book?  Can anyone suggest
> alternatives?
>
> My level is best described as "intermediate".
> Thanks in advance!

The main problem with it is that it is somewhat out of date, being
(roughly) descriptive of 7.1, when we're now at 7.3, where there are
fairly significant improvements that the book certainly does not
address.

There's a new book from New Riders that I browsed on the weekend that
seems quite good in discussing architecture; it is definitely better
in its discussion of vacuuming and performance tuning.

The thing that's "wrong" with any of the books that are available is
that they have considerable portions about the whole variety of
language "bindings" (e.g. - Perl, Python, C, C++, ...) which bulk up
the book when it's really only likely that you'd need a reference on
one or two of the languages.  

I would have loved to see twice or three times as much in the NR book
on performance tuning, and at least twice as much discussion about the
implications of MVCC.

The ORA book isn't useless; I keep a copy on my desk, and fairly
regularly look at it.  Mind you, I more often use the copy of the PG
docs that I put on my PalmPilot that represents the /same material/,
only three versions newer.

If ORA does a new edition (and it's probably not the ideal time for
it, with the book market being rather soft), it would be a pretty good
choice; otherwise, I'd suggest that the NR book has more modern
material that would encourage buying it.
-- 
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and kill some random underling." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/>


Wed, 26 Mar 2003 21:20:10 -0500
Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com>
Re: What's a good PostgreSQL guide book?
"Gary Hendricks" <ghendricks@yahoo.com> writes:

> I'm thinking of buying "Practical PostgreSQL" from O'Reilly.
>
> Has anyone got any comments on this book?

As Christopher Browne pointes out, some of the information is
outdated.

My real criticism, though, would be that *far* too much of a book
about PostgreSQL is an advertisment for the authors' company's
application framework thing.  This necessarily means fewer pages for
what you're supposedly there for, PostgreSQL.

> Can anyone suggest alternatives?

I'm on a plane right at the momen , but the _PostgreSQL Developers
Reference_ (I believe that's the title) from SAMS, by Geschwinde &
someone else, is clear, comprehensive, and, on everything I've ever
checked, correct.

I would buy it again in a heartbeat.

Mike
-- 
I'd write a song called "Senorita with a Necklace of Tears" -- Paul Simon


Thu, 27 Mar 2003 08:05:07 -0500
Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman@debian.org>
Re: What's a good PostgreSQL guide book?
On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 08:05, Michael Alan Dorman wrote:
> "Gary Hendricks" <ghendricks@yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> > I'm thinking of buying "Practical PostgreSQL" from O'Reilly.
> >
> > Has anyone got any comments on this book?
> 
> As Christopher Browne pointes out, some of the information is
> outdated.
> 
> My real criticism, though, would be that *far* too much of a book
> about PostgreSQL is an advertisment for the authors' company's
> application framework thing.  This necessarily means fewer pages for
> what you're supposedly there for, PostgreSQL.
> 
> > Can anyone suggest alternatives?
> 
> I'm on a plane right at the momen , but the _PostgreSQL Developers
> Reference_ (I believe that's the title) from SAMS, by Geschwinde &
> someone else, is clear, comprehensive, and, on everything I've ever
> checked, correct.
> 

I've not read the book myself, but one of my coworkers wails in anguish
at the mention of the book due to errors he found in it; I remember one
of them was related to the notion of functions saving query plans.

Right now I'm reading through the new "PostgreSQL" book from Korry &
Susan Douglas (also from Sams). It's ok, though a little outdated for
what I like in a new book. They started writing at the time of 7.1, but
it does touch on some things for 7.3 so it's more up to date than many
of the books out there. I've not encountered much fluff yet, though it
does devote a lot of space to various programming interfaces you might
not be interested in; though all are open standard languages, not any
specific companies. Hopefully when I'm done I can post a thorough
review.

Robert Treat  


31 Mar 2003 08:29:25 -0500
Robert Treat <xzilla@users.sourceforge.net>
Re: What's a good PostgreSQL guide book?

>The thing that's "wrong" with any of the books that are available is
>that they have considerable portions about the whole variety of
>language "bindings" (e.g. - Perl, Python, C, C++, ...) which bulk up
>the book when it's really only likely that you'd need a reference on
>one or two of the languages.
>
>I would have loved to see twice or three times as much in the NR book
>on performance tuning, and at least twice as much discussion about the
>implications of MVCC.

Christopher, of all the topics that we covered, I enjoyed writing the 
performance chapter the most.  In my daytime job, I work on languages and 
development tools and a lot of what I do is performance and tuning work.

I'd love to hear suggestions on what you would like to see in the second 
edition.  I've been trying to talk some of the publishers into letting us 
do an "Advanced  PostgreSQL Performance Tuning" book.  Not much luck yet - 
if our first book does really well, I think we'll be able to get the 
publishers a bit more interested in that sort of thing.

The language bindings chapters did get a bit tedious to write, but it was 
fun to work on the PL/pgSQL and ecpg chapters - it's been difficult to find 
good information on either of those (until now).

I hope you enjoy the rest of the book.

                 -- Korry


Mon, 31 Mar 2003 15:43:41 -0500
korry <korry@starband.net>
Re: What's a good PostgreSQL guide book?