http://www.osnews.com/story/617/Book_Review_Practical_PostgreSQL_ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:29:37 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Ehm, PostgreSQL is _not_ included by default in *BSD-systems, at least not FreeBSD and OpenBSD. You might be thinking of Berkeley DB? www.sleepycat.com Wed, 06 Feb 2002 09:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? MySQL is spelt MySQL! Wed, 06 Feb 2002 11:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You knew what Eugenia was talking about, didn't you? Then, quit being so quick to point out spelling errors! I'd like to see all of the people who point out stuff like that to try and do what she does - write technical articles in a language other than their native one, and see how well they do... I'm pretty sure that the majority won't be anywhere as proficient (I'm including myself - I can barely get by in English, let alone anything else!) Wed, 06 Feb 2002 12:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? PostgreSQL 7.2 has just been released. :-) Thu, 07 Feb 2002 06:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The book is also available online:

http://www.commandprompt.com/ppbook/ Fri, 08 Feb 2002 14:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The book is poor. Really, really poor. People practically perpetrating PostgreSQL (sorry, couldn't resist need a lot more than this book in order to get anywhere. The book simply fails to cover very much of the details I hoped to see. Very little information on best practices, tuning, nitty-gritty under-the-hood info, very little information on programming against PostgreSQL, and a lot of fluff at the end about a payware, so-simple-it-can't-do-much "application server" that reads like an ad. Rarely have I been so offended by a book. A large part of my indignation comes from the fact that the book is published by O'Reilly -- I expect *so* much better from them, I can only think that somehow they got hoodwinked by Command Prompt.

As a hint to all PostgreSQL users, just read the online version of the book, don't bother to buy a copy. Or better yet, go to www.postgresql.org and read the online documentation. In parts it is sparse, old, or needs improvement, but it strives to be comprehensive and succeeds moderately well. It is also usable and constantly improving.

I cannot recommend the other books on the market, because I haven't read them, but I will be looking into them to see if they cover more information in a more useful manner. Tue, 19 Feb 2002 22:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If you're looking for a good PostgreSQL book, get Bruce Momjian's PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts or preview it online. Bruce is one of the core PostgreSQL developers. Mon, 11 Mar 2002 17:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments