Re: postgresql book - practical or something newer?

On Wednesday 30 January 2008 02:54, Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 19:16 +0000, Dave Page wrote:
> > On Jan 29, 2008 6:16 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)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>

Just so you know, I approached OReally about writing a PostgreSQL Cookbook,
and they turned it down. They did offer me some other titles, but those don't
seem to have gone anywhere.

I have thought of going the self-publishing route, but the reason against it
is the same one as you don't see a lot of book publishers working on PG
books; the sales just aren't that strong.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL