Re: MySQL refugee interested in pgSQL

hi,

There's two things you need to understand to get through the learning curve:

* What's hard to understand is the industry standard 'theory' of SQL.
* Compiling from source or installing from the modules from the
Linux based distributions

Both points haven't really so much to do with Postgres as it does with
the prerequisite knowledge required of a DBA and systems administration
of your OS.

The word "novel" is often confused with "hard". For example, this link
<http://www.varlena.com/varlena/GeneralBits/Tidbits/bernier/art_66/graphingWithR.html>
is an article I wrote about installing the procedural language plr and
applying it to graphing hits on a firewall. Procedural languages,
triggers, rules are what you need to learn
<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/static/sql-commands.html> about.

Download pgadmin3 <http://www.pgadmin.org/pgadmin3/>. It will help you
"see" what you are doing (GUI's are good for that).

cheers

Robert Bernier

Jesse Thompson wrote:

>Hello, how do you do?
>
>I am a MySQL guy. I am interested in pgSQL. I have learned roughly
>everything I know about databases from using MySQL, and all that that
>implies. I would like to learn about PG and about "real" relational
>database theory. Links to any type of "PGsql for MySQL vets" and/or "Real
>relational database theory for MySQL vets" documents would be appreciated.
>
>Due to the hype over the feud, what I fear here of course is that I will
>be told that "learning Real DBM requires a Ph.D in DBM", and/or that
>"Knowing DBM is an in-born trait, please exit the gene pool immediatly". I
>don't suspect that either is the case.
>
>I am also very torn about the feud. I have been using MySQL without
>incident for years doing fairly complicated things under load. I want to
>know more about the things that ACID pundits appear to hold so dear to
>their hearts and MySQL eschews. I really can't fathom most of them yet.
>But at the same time I am cut very deep by the animous shown towards MySQL
>and it's users on a personal level. It is as if, by entrusting data of any
>kind to a MySQL database, I am clubbing baby seals somehow.
>
>I have redrafted this message probably a dozen times now to omit my
>instinctive defensiveness of MySQL, my abilities as a DBA, or as a future
>DBA. I have come to feel as though being a Real Programmer involves being
>a DBA. To write code involves managing data. Managing any volume of data
>involves a database, which to the limits of my knowledge would be a
>relational SQL database. Quit smirking. SQL is fully non-transparent and
>the ability to access data in an SQL database (espescially once you
>involve transactions, locking, foreign keys, etc etc) requires full
>understanding of all of these. Thus to be a coder one must be a DBA, and
>the vitriol directed towards the inadequacies of MySQL directly impunes my
>22 years of programming experience and puts me on the defensive.
>
>So perhaps SQL and it's inability to be black-boxed is itself the problem.
>>From a Semantic perspecive it sure is ugly, even more so when you leave
>the realm of MySQL. I've seen banner ads featuring hybrid cheetah-snails
>suggesting this as well.. but I don't know of a viable DBMS alternative (I
>didn't click the banner ads) so I'm left in the position where writing
>virtually any computer program apparently requires ACID compliant RDBMS
>knowledge or else the seals have to die. :(
>
>- - Jesse Thompson
>Bend, OR
>
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